First major collection in English of the writings of the leading Soviet agricultural economist and statistician of the 1920s, who posited a theory of long cycles of economic activity of some fifty to sixty years duration. Jailed and ultimately executed for his criticisms of Stalin's regime, his work was not widely available even in Russian prior to the dissolution of the USSR. The four volumes contain his writing on: economic statics, dynamics and conjuncture; basic problems of economic statics and dynamics; agriculture; and his speeches and letters. The first volume also contains six introductory essays. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This four-volume set contains a large selection of Kondratiev's work in translation. Kondratiev produced works on aspects of long waves, questions of methodology, economic dynamics, economic policy, and both the history of economic thought and economic history.

This book showcases the power of economic principles to explain and predict issues and current events in the food, agricultural, agribusiness, international trade, natural resources and other sectors. The result is an agricultural economics textbook that provides students and instructors with a clear, up-to-date, and straightforward approach to learning how a market-based economy functions, and how to use simple economic principles for improved decision making. While the primary focus of the book is on microeconomic aspects, agricultural economics has expanded over recent decades to include issues of macroeconomics, international trade, agribusiness, environmental economics, natural resources, and international development. Hence, these topics are also provided with significant coverage.

THE idea that the dynamics of economic life in the capitalistic social order is not of a simple and linear but rather of a complex and cyclical character is nowadays generally recognized. Science, however, has fallen far short of clarifying the nature and the types of these cyclical, wave-like movements. When in economics we speak of cycles, we generally mean seven to eleven year business cycles. But these seven to eleven year movements are obviously not the only type of economic cycles. The dynamics of economic life is in reality more complicated. In addition to the above-mentioned cycles, which we shall agree to call “intermediate,” the existence of still shorter waves of about three and one-half years’ length has recently been shown to be probable. But that is not all. There is, indeed, reason to assume the existence of long waves of an average length of about 50 years in the capitalistic economy, a fact which still further complicates the problem of economic dynamics.

Although all economic activities take place in sectors, economists often devote little attention to differences between and characteristics of sectors. This book tries to show that mesoeconomics, the economic exploration of sectors and groups, is a useful instrument of analysis between microeconomics (the analysis of markets) and macroeconomics (the analysis of economies). In order to do so, economists and social scientists from related disciplines and coming from Europe, Australia and Asia, demonstrate that sectors matter for economic development and the formation of societies. The book includes chapters with rigorous economic analysis, outlooks on economic history, and case studies in order to show the relevance of sectoral issues, this broad range of content making it likely the most comprehensive book on mesoeconomics to date.