Munich Personal RePEc Archive The Recurrence of Long Cycles: Theories, Stylized Facts and Figures Tsoulfidis, Lefteris and Papageorgiou, Aris University of Macedonia, University of Macedonia 10 June 2017 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/82853/ MPRA Paper No. 82853, posted 23 Nov 2017 06:39 UTC The Recurrence of Long Cycles: Theories, Stylized Facts and Figures Lefteris Tsoulfidis* and Aris Papageorgiou* Corresponding Author Professor Lefteris Tsoulfidis Department of Economics, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki Greece Tel.: 30 2310 891788 Email:
[email protected] ABSTRACT Basic innovations and their diffusion, the expansion or contraction of the level of economic activity and the volume of international trade, rising sovereign debts and their defaults, conflicts and the outbreak of wars, are some of the major phenomena appearing during the downswing or upswing phases of long cycles. In this article, we examine the extent to which these phenomena constitute stylized facts of the different phases of long cycles which recur quite regularly in the turbulent economic history of capitalism. The main argument of this paper is that the evolution of long cycles is a result of the long-run movement of profitability. During the downswing of a long cycle, falling profitability induces innovation investment and the associated with it 'creative destruction' of the capital stock that eventually set the stage for the upswing phase of a new long cycle. JEL classifications: B14, B24, E11, E32 Key Words: Long Cycles, Innovations, Profit rate * Department of Economics University of Macedonia. Versions of the paper were presented at the 5th Conference of Evolutionary Economics, Volos-Greece May 2017 and the 19th conference of the Greek Historians of Economic Thought, Thessaloniki, Greece June 2017.