ABSTRACT
BUSINESS CYCLES are a type of fluctuation characteristic of economic activities organized in the form of “business economy” or “high capitalism,” to use the German term. They have a wavelike pattern—each cycle includes a phase of revival, expansion, recession and contraction. These successive changes in activity spread more or less promptly over a large part, seldom over all, of the economic processes of a country. The cycles are recurrent, but not periodic. Their average duration varies in communities at different stages of economic development from about three to about six or seven years.
