ABSTRACT
This subject was first studied as a branch of the theory of production, interest in it having been stimulated by a series of financial and industrial crises. Literally hundreds of uncoordinated, and even contradictory, explanations have been put forward to account for the phenomena of various sorts of crises, and unanimity of doctrine in this branch of economics is still very far from being achieved, in spite of the good offices of such comprehensive thinkers as Pigou and Mitchell.
