A Wavelet Investigation of Periodic Long Swings in the Economy: The Original Data of Kondratieff and Some Important Series of GDP per Capita

Abstract

The existence of fluctuations is part of the narrative, especially when there is a slowdown (or worse, a contraction) in economic activity. The presence of long waves with a period of about 50 years as proposed by Kondratieff is one of the most controversial and fascinating theories about economic cycles. This paper analyses both the original Kondratieff data (from which the hypothesis started) and a dataset that includes GDP per capita for several significant countries. By applying the wavelet analysis (WA), the main objective of the paper is to understand whether it is plausible to support the existence of periodic fluctuations consistent with long cycles theory. The outcomes for Kondratieff’s original dataset do not show the presence of a coherent periodicity for most cases. The same conclusion can be drawn for all the GDP per capita series.