ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the possibility that the deceleration of growth among the industrialised countries since the late 1960s reflects long-term cycles in economic activity that were first identified by Kondratieff (1935). The Kondratieff cycle is spread over roughly half a century and consists of twenty-five years of boom followed by twenty-five years of slump. In the present context the boom years would consist of the 1940s and 1950s and most of the 1960s. If, in fact, an autonomous Kondratieff cycle exists, it may be that the slump of the 1970s reflects the unravelling of Kondratieff forces. If so, the last two decades or so of the twentieth century are likely to be years of slump and stagnation. It is worth pointing out that Kondratieff first carried out his research in the early 1920s, i.e. before the onset of the interwar depression, and his data period finished in 1920. He identified 1920 as the peak of the upswing, implying that approximately twenty-five years of depression lay ahead. He was not far wrong.
