Business Cycles

Lars Tvede

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415270502
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134697977
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Why do we experience business cycles? What creates them? Is it mass psychology, or phenomena in the management of business? Are the banks to blame or should we be looking to the unions and the politicians? Lars Tvede's story moves back in time to the Scottish gambler and financial genius, John Law, and then on to the distracted Adam Smith, the stockbroker Ricardo, the investment banker Thornton, the extrovert Schumpeter, the speculator Jay Gould and many others. The computer jugglers of the modern day, with giant networks of equations, try to solve the same questions that have attracted the attention of classical economists throughout the centuries. Throughout this volume, business cycle theories are used to explain actual events. Theoretical thinking has reflected the economist's own experiences of hyper-inflations, depressions, speculation orgies and liquidity squeezes. The reader can follow the narrative to discover how economists often thought that problems had been solved until new data changed the economic picture once again.

Index

Abramovitz, Moses, 88

acceleration principle, 155–9

additional pound theory, 105–6, 121, 124, 127, 157

“agents”, 69, 159, 208, 290

aggregate money supply, 43, 290

aggregate oscillation, 80

Agricultural Revolution, 27

agriculture, 60, 143–4

amplitude of cyclical fluctuations, 151

animal spirits, 127

anti-business policies, 138–9

anti-monopoly policies, 138

see also monopolies

aristocracy, 14, 16

Arkwrights, Richard, 33

Arrow, Kenneth, 160

artificial intelligence, 203

art prices, 254

art speculation, 233–5, 243–5, 251–6

Asia/Pacific economies, viii, 268–83

asset prices, 219–24

“atoms of pleasure” concept, 69–70, 154

attractors, and chaos theory, 192–4, 200

Austria, 57, 110, 134–5

Austrian School of economics, 107, 111

automobile production, 83

Babbage, Charles, 61, 67–8, 73

Babson, Roger Ward, 91–3, 110, 114–15, 236

backlogs, in ordering systems, 175

Bagehot, Walther, 50, 52

bank credit, 24

Bank of England, 27, 39–40, 42, 44–5, 113–14, 257, 259–60

bank reserves, 79

bankruptcies, 8, 76

banks, 93–4, 101–3

“banksters”, 119

Banque Royale, 11, 17, 20–2

barter economy, 52

bear markets, 247, 320–1

beer game, 171–6

“billets d'etat”, 9–11

Bodenkreditanstalt, 110

Bolton, Hamilton, 220–2

bonds, 24, 222, 224, 236–7, 317–19

see also junk bonds

boom-bust cycles, 50, 52, 56–61, 79, 319–19...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• BUSINESS CYCLES
• Title Page
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• The Discovery of Business Cycles
• The First Business Cycle Theories
• A Hidden World
• Business Cycles and Asset Prices
• Growing Up
• The Beat of the Heart
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index