Longer Trade Cycles | Nature


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ABSTRACT IN a pamphlet entitled “The Longer Trade Cycles” (Almquist and Wiksells Boktryekeri A-B., Stockholm, 1935), Axel F. Enstrom claims that a sixty year oscillation can be traced in a


large number of price movements and production processes. An investigation of coal price quotations is said to have shown a complete sixty year period extending from about 1850 to 1910,


while an examination of Sauerbeck's index number curve for wholesale prices disclosed the same cycle and in addition pointed to an earlier cycle of probably the same length. Valuable


data illustrating price variations over a very long period, going back as far as the thirteenth century, are to be found in the Vicomte D'Avenal's monumental survey of French wheat


prices, and an analysis of this material, according to Mr. Enstrom, shows a series of cycles of the order of magnitude of 60-50 years. If the D'Avcnal curve is examined in the light of


purely qualitative evidence which French, Swedish and European history as a whole can give regarding economic events in tho eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it will be found that the 60


50 year period of the curve accurately reflects the fluctuations in the European trade situation. Tho great technical inventions have as a rule been achieved in those periods which


correspond to periods of depression in tho superposed trade curve, that is, in periods characterised by a low price level. Access through your institution Buy or subscribe This is a preview


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CITE THIS ARTICLE Longer Trade Cycles. _Nature_ 136, 292 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136292b0 Download citation * Published: 01 September 1935 * Issue Date: 24 August 1935 * DOI:


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