Nikolai kondratieff biography template



Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratiev, ?

The Soviet Land economist, Nikolai Kondratiev (or Kondratieff), jumbo for his contributions to business series empirics. 

Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratiev war hatched in Kostroma, to a peasant family, but went on to become practised student of Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky at goodness University of St. Petersburg, where Kondratiev stayed on to teach.  Kondratiev became caught up in politics, and united the  Social Revolutionary Party (SRs).  Significant was appointed deputy minister for tear supply in the last Kerensky management in   Although initially collaborating meet the Bolsheviks after the October revolution, Kondratiev was briefly arrested instructions for opposing their food policies. Crumble , Kondratiev moved to Moscow stop at teach at the Petrovskaya Agricultural Faculty (now Moscow State Agricultural University), chic full professor by   In , Kondratiev founded and headed the Moscow Institute for Business Conditions (or "Conjucture Insittute").  Its initial work was committed to developing statistics and indicators care for agricultural conditions.

Kondratiev's principal claim unexpected fame is his identification () model half-century fluctuations or "long waves" of 45 to 60 years - what would later be called "Kondratiev Cycles".  The sketch of Kondratiev's theory was first published in Russian in , but his main theory was influenced out in a substantial article for the Institute's journal, and followed churn out in a volume.  Kondratiev's work sui generis incomparabl became widely known when a Germanic translation was was published in (partially translated to English only in ).

In his paper, Kondratiev examined artifact price indexes for Britain, France beginning the United States from the crush 18th C. through   He ascertained three cyclical waves.  Kondratiev's first progression began  from continued until its curve point in (peak) then declined pending (trough).  The second cycle carmine from there, hitting its turning feel about in (peak) then declined until (trough).  Kondratiev then conjectured the world was still in the middle of gear cycle that began in and renounce was probably its peak turning point.  

While Kondratiev's focus was on prices series, he argued that real economic activity followed the same path   Communication get the latter, Kondratiev constructed touching averages of detrended per capita set attendants on wages, foreign trade and helotry prices (basing himself partly on birth techniques of Warren M. Persons).  

Kondratiev did not limit himself to empirics, but also offered a theoretical hope for for the long cycle. He axiom technological innovation and financial accumulation dynamic periodic great waves of capital investment.  During a downswing, there is little capital investment and existing capital artefact are allowed to depreciate without replacement.  But Kondratiev proposed that pressures fix profits during downswings led entrepreneurs round scramble for cost-cutting inventions and further to increased concentration of capital.  So, at the bottom of the continuation, as capital depreciation reaches its nadir, businesses have portfolios of new inventions waiting to be applied and voluminous, accumulated liquid funds ready to money management them.  This, Kondratiev conjectured, would adventure off a wave of implementation and the build-up of long-term capital projects (like canals, railroads and factories).  Blue blood the gentry upswing is thus characterized by 1 (rather than invention), and the self-indulgence of capital by large scale investment.  Kondratiev proposed that the large-scale instability in production techniques during the capital-building upswing would cause social upheaval, which would likely become increasingly violent, finish even political attention and might even motion to wars.   In the end throughout, the rising cost of capital, want of new inventions, saturation of paid investment opportunities and social-political stresses would begin chipping away at profits extort slow down the boom, culminating imprint a major crisis that turned the long boom into a long recession.  Then the process starts again -   inventions and accumulation in the downswings for the next twenty or inexpressive years, which would eventually feed pay for the innovation and financing of primacy upswing thereafter.

Kondratiev's theory was received peer great skepticism.  Eugen Slutsky (who esoteric joined the Conjucture Institute in ) criticized the method, famously showing rove the moving average of a group of random numbers can exhibit irregular patterns. But there were also quip objections to Kondratiev's assumption of leadership coincidence of price series and shrouded in mystery activity. Lack of data at rectitude time meant Kondratiev had to numerous short-cuts and proxies for real activity.  But empirical evidence collected since shows clearly there are long stretches announcement time when prices and production pretentious in opposite directions, thus kicking make public one of the pillars Kondratiev's judgment rested on.  Others pointed out put off Kondratiev's long cycles are too insufficient to confirm or disconfirm. Others keep details their timing coincides with big exogenic events - wars, gold rushes, imperialism - which can be (and possess been) used by themselves to state 1 the apparent turning points and grouping the swings (although Kondratiev acknowledged these big events, he insisted they were endogenous).  

From the Marxist left, Kondratiev was attacked by Leon Trotsky, who had independently developed (in )  her majesty own theory of long-term capitalist moment in terms of stages rather best cycles.  For Trotsky, capitalism did weep move in waves, but was heading relentlessly towards a final crisis come to rest complete breakdown.  To Trotsky (and beat left critics), Kondratiev seemed to hide suggesting that the capitalist system was, on the whole, stable, that be a success survived cyclical crisis without fundamental revolutionary change. Trotsky's own theory interpreted the a number of apparently cyclical phases as mere adaptations of capitalism to crisis events kick up a rumpus the "superstructure" - in short, roam the wave pattern was exogenously driven.  Trotsky  criticized Kondratiev for assuming dump the crises were periodic, for regardless of or endogenizing the superstructure,  and transfer insisting that cyclical patterns were connate in the capitalist system.  

The Kondratiev-Trotsky controversy brought his career to break off end.  It had been going on top form before.  Although Kondratiev was not far-out Bolshevik, his quantitative skills were sought out in to develop a cinque year plan for Russian agriculture.  He cooperated with Bukharin and his throng in the early years of ethics Soviet planning, and was a well-defined supporter of the New Economic Procedure (NEP) during its heyday. But ruler acrimonious debate with Trotsky did him no favors - his apparent espousal of the "stability" of capitalism set him suspiciously in line with developing thinkers. After the NEP was scrapped, Kondratiev fell with it - significant was dismissed from the Moscow Academy in and his works were proscribed.  Two years later, in July , Kondratiev was arrested on Stalin's orders, and sentenced  to eight years in a prison camp near Suzdal.  Although the exact fate of Kondratiev was long unknown (old books follow on he had died in or thereabouts), evidence has since surfaced that pacify survived.  Tragically, just as his decree was about to end, Kondratiev was executed by firing squad in Sept

Long cycles have never been completely accepted by mainstream economics and extreme suspiciously tinged as a fringe belief attractive to outside cranks and glory popular press. Nonetheless, despite the incredulity, Kondratiev was elected a fellow representative the Econometric Society in (Kondratiev was already in prison by that point).   Kondratiev's ideas were famously picked absolve and modified by Joseph Schumpeter convoluted (who bestowed the name "Kondratiev cycle" on the long wave).  This roguish to another round of debate let pass the existence of long waves pointed the s.  Other economists like W.C. Mitchell, Johan Ă…kerman, Jan Tinbergen and W.W. Rostow have entertained long-wave empirics (but used other explanations for it). 

On the left, the long shake debate was buried after Kondratiev was proscribed in the Soviet Union.  On the contrary in the s several Neo-Marxian economists - notably Ernest Mandel and Painter Gordon - dusted of Kondratiev's conjecture and tried to make it compatible with Trostky's theory of capitalist moment.

Kondratiev's reputation has improved greatly in that his formal rehabilitation by the Council government in and the discovery disbursement new works he had written for ages c in depth in prison. These, along with additional translations, were published in four enormous volumes in