Dear Andre Gunder and folks,
A.G., you are right (parts of Asia will strongly recover) but you are wrong
on one major point - the Kondratieff cycle dating game. I have very strong
empirical convictions about it, based on Joshua Goldstein's data series
(1988) about the growth of industrial production in the (industrialised)
world. Submit these data to the calculation of incremental yearly growth
rates, and apply the multivariate EXCEL polynomial analysis, you arrive at
the startling result that there are indeed very strong Kuznets cycles (6th
order polynomial expressions), to be dated (R^2 given in %)
1741-56 23.5%
1756-74 36.1%
1774-1793 34.8%
1793-1812 39.7%
1812-1832 16.4%
1832-62 25.7%
1862-85 36.3%
1885-1908 56.2%
1908-32 44.2%
1932-58 19.1%
1958-75 68.8%
1975-97 66.0% (this is based on UN and IMF data, since Joshua's series
ends in 1975)
These are calculations, based on the original data without any moving
averages. So Chris Chase Dunn is right all along: there are very strong
Kuznets cycles.
Secondly, you have to control for the very short term Kitchins, in order to
measure your Kondratieffs. So I applied to the same data series 5-year
moving averages, and you get the
following Kondratieffs (6th order polynomial expressions, based on EXCEL):
1756-1832 R^2 30.8%
1832-1885 9.2%
1885-1932 50.5%
1932-1982 40.3%
My dating scheme by and large corresponds to that of our friend Volker
Bornschier in Zurich, whose recent book on Western society (Transaction,
the German original dates back 1988, but has been reworked and enlarged for
the English edition) is a must for all of you who are interested in that
kind of questions.
The major error of some approaches is to mix up the Kuznets cycle low of
around 1908 with a Kondratieff low. Mandel, Joshua Goldstein and many
others date their Kondratieff low at around 1890 or somewhere, so they
don't get the uopswing out of 1885 and the downswing in the 1930s properly
into focus. Bornschier has convincingly shown I
think the technological and societal factors that distinguish the 1870s and
early 1880s as well as the 1930s as a Kondratieff cycle low.
What is the beef, then? Major disturbances but no Kondratieff crash in
Asia; perhaps also an Arrighi process where some swimmers (China) get their
heads out of the flood by
dumping others (Malaysia etc., those with a secular negative current
account in the Amir sense) down, with the stability of world capitalism as
a three-layer systems remaining intact (here I strictly follow our friend
Giovanni).
Kind regards around the world,
Yours humbly Arno Tausch from Warsaw
PS more of that in my graphs that you can find in my WSN Archive network
article on Transnational Integration etc.