ABSTRACT
Modern economies are subject to fluctuations, some of which show regular recurrences to form cycles. In our period the most important sequence was one which covered the whole half-century in a single upswing or boom followed, after a turning point in the mid-1970s, by a downswing or depression. In that cycle a large part of the world economy moved in step, for reasons given in Chapters 3 and 6 above. The major industrial economies set the tone, and the dependent economies followed, but tended to fluctuate with greater amplitude. In particular, the relative slowdown after the 1970s was, as described in Chapter 4, much more pronounced over a large part of the Third World as well as in eastern Europe than it was in the west. Some hint of the differences in the experience of growth between the two periods may be derived from Table 2.1, p. 14, which also shows a rather different rhythm for the whole of the Far East.
