Trend and Cycle

Steindl, Josef

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Document type:: Works

Collection:: Josef Steindl Collection

Title:: Trend and Cycle

Author:: Steindl, Josef

Scope:: Typoskript, Konvolut aus zwei Versionen von "Trend and Cycle", teilweise identisch, nummeriert, handschriftliche Anmerkungen und Notizen, 10 Blätter und 9 Blätter

Year of publication:: 1988

Source material date:: [vermutlich um/vor 1988]

Language:: English

Description:: Trend, cycle, cycle problems, long run changes, utilisation, measurement of technical progress, technology and economic structure, excess capacity in the long run, Kalecki.

Note:: Versionen einer Reihe von Entwürfen zu "Trend and Cycle". Die letzte Version wurde post mortem veröffentlicht und vermutlich 1988 verfasst. - Beilage (63 Seiten): Industrial Output Section (Division of Research and Statistics): Capacity Utilization, Manufacturing, Mining, and Utlities and Industrial Materials January 1967-December 1984 with supplementary manufacturing data, January 1948-December 1966. Revised July 1985, Washington D.C.

Related work:: Steindl, Josef: Trend and Cycle. In: Mott, Tracy und Shapiro, Nina (Hrsg.): Rethinking Capitalist Development. Essays on the Economics of Josef Steindl. New York: Routledge 2004, S. 164-173

Topic:: Growth,cycle and stagnation

JEL Classification:: E11 [General Aggregative Models: Marxian, Sraffian, Kaleckian] E32 [Business Fluctuations, Cycles] E37 [Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles: Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications]

Shelfmark:: S/M.18.1

Access:: Free access

1 TREND AND CYCLE . Anybody who writes on long term growth is in danger of taking a larger bite than he can chew. I want at least to reduce the risk by limiting myself to the demand aspects of the problem. This is the question which occupied Rosa Luxemburg: How can capitalism bent on high accumulation rates as it is find markets for its products? At times the question seems pointless, at other times it becomes so urgent that people wonder whether there is any future in producing more goods. The basis from which I start is Kalecki’s view (1943,1954,1968) on long run growht, on what he calls the trend. He was exceedingly brief on this subject, but I think that the following two statements contain the essence of what he wrote: a) A positive trend will only be generated by a continuing exogenous inf1uence,that is, if we exclude the influence of public spending and of export surplusses ,by continuing technological change which promises extra profits to the innovator. b) The exogenous influence is combined with endogenous elements and it is the two in their combined and mutual interaction which produces the trend.Kalecki in this connection speaks of a "semi- autonomous trend”. The endogenous element corresponds to a long term memory, that is to the evolution of the economy in the recent past ( where recent is to be understood as a series of years,perhaps embodying a whole trade cycle ). This requires a few comments: The term endogenous must be specified by reference to a theoretical system which embodies all the relations (the feedbacks or couplings) between the elements of the system. In the present case the system is the macroeconomic model of the main elements of the social accounting system such as investment,income, profits,wages and employment etc. More specifically it is the framework of Kalecki’s theory of the trade eye1e. The essence of Kalecki’s position is that he denies the possibility of explaining the trend by reference to endogenous factors alone (see his polemic against Harrod,1962 ) but equally also refuses to regard it as a purely exogenous phenomenon. The present paper is concerned with a discussion of the two sets of factors and the role which the one or the other may play in the generation of the trend. It is thus basically no more than an attempt to elucidate and elaborate the broad hints which Kalecki has given on the subject. Trend and cycle. Trend and cycle are concepts which arise in the statistical analysis of time series. They are distinguished and separated ex post. Is there an economic meaning in these concepts which relates them to economic behaviour? Some such meaning is certainly presupposed in the theories of several authors: Kalecki’s pure business cycle, Harrod’s analysis of long term growth and cycle.The underlying economic idea seems to be this:

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