[PEN-L:4627] Re: Kondratiev

[Bruce McFarling <brmcf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Barkley Rosser has raised the 'la duree' cycle of Braudel

     Given that various people have mentioned the
recent performance of East Asian economies, some of
which have been the only economies in the world to
generally perform BETTER since the presumed 1973
turning point of the global Kondratiev long wave
(except for a few oil exporters during the 1970's),
I thought I might add a further knot to this thread.
     That is the idea of yet an even longer wave/cycle
than that of Kondratiev, "la duree" or the "geographic
cycle" of Fernand Braudel, first formulated in his
magnum opus, _The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean
World in the Age of Philip II, Vol. 1_.  This hypothesizes
a 300-400 year cycle thus generating not just clusters
of several bad decades (Kondratiev) but whole centuries
that are bad (500's, 900's, 1300's, 1600's).  ...

	Of course, the Myrdal-esque interlinked-long cycle theory
	naturally lends itself to possible extensions.  There is, after
	'la duree', the MegaCycle, which began with the agricultural
	revolution.  However, there haven't been any turning points in
	MegaCycle yet, so its unclear whether we're heading for the peak
	or the trough. 8-)#

     However, one aspect of this theory is the observation
that with the switch points of EVERY OTHER cycle (500-600's
and 1300's) came shifts in global technological leadership
between Europe and Asia.  We seem to be right on schedule
for that and it may be shifting to Asia.  That might
explain the exceptional recent Asian performance in resisting
the otherwise global Kondratiev downswing (which I note hit
the socialist/communist economies as well, except for the PRC).

	Note that this is a switch between Western Eurasia and Eastern
	Eurasia.  Now that the New World has been thrown in the mix, maybe
	something new will happen.  Or already happened.  And what time
	series do we have to test la duree, anyway?

Virtually,

Bruce McFarling, Knoxville
brmcf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx