• DOI:10.1086/449905
• Corpus ID: 154354441

The Nature and Significance of Kuznets Cycles

@article{Abramovitz1961TheNA,
  title={The Nature and Significance of Kuznets Cycles},
  author={Moses Abramovitz},
  journal={Economic Development and Cultural Change},
  year={1961},
  volume={9},
  pages={225 - 248}
}

• M. Abramovitz
• Published 1 April 1961
• Economics
• Economic Development and Cultural Change

Both are generalizations of apparently irregular behavior. Total output rarely rises or falls at the same rate for two consecutive months, and it seldom moves in the same direction for many months together. These irregular movements, however, are not without pattern. The month-to-month movements are, for periods of time, predominantly upward, and these periods of expansion are succeeded by other periods in which movements are predominantly downward. These are the business cycles of capitalist economic life. They are fluctuations of aggregate output in which other aspects of economic activity join; they are widely diffused through the many sectors of the economy; and they recur at intervals which are as long as ten to twelve years but are normally less than five or six. And when we consider periods longer than those of business cycles, there emerges a persistent underlying tendency for output to rise. Although the rate of growth is not constant, the average level of output during any business-cycle period is normally higher than that attained during the preceding cycle period. The persistence of growth is one characteristic of the primary secular trend of output in capitalist countries in the era of industrialization.