Kitchin cycles or business cycles (3.5 years, or forty months) were first observed in the American economy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and also in Europe during our own time. The classical text is Joseph Kitchin, “Cycles and Trends in Economic Factors,” Review of Economics and Statistics 5 (1923) 10–16. They are sometimes called “inventory cycles” and are thought to rise from the structure of modern business enterprise. But several historians have also reported them in price data as early as the fifteenth century, and Pierre Chaunu has discovered them in the rhythm of
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