ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with structures and long-term dynamics that characterized the world-economy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Innovation approaches are rooted in Schumpeter's work about the world economic crisis of the 1930s. They consider the intermittent appearance of technological innovations as the central explanation of long-term alternation between phases of economic boom and depression. The most prominent advocate of capital accumulation theories is Ernest Mandel, who considers the Marxist approach to the explanation of long waves to be essentially a theory of "long waves in the average rate of profit." The concept of world leadership or hegemonic cycles refers to the rise and fall of hegemonic powers in the world-system. Economic expansion and growth is one of the most important characteristics of the modern world-system. The initially European-centered capitalist world-economy continuously expanded to new territories. The globalization of production has been particularly favored by the revolutionary innovations in communication technologies.
