The biological determinants of long-wave behavior in socioeconomic growth and development

In this paper, it is claimed that the effective causality of long-term macroeconomic rhythms, most commonly referred to as long waves or Kondratieff waves, is founded in our biological realm. The observed patterns of regularity in human affairs, manifest as socioeconomic rhythms and recurrent phenomena, are constrained and codetermined by our natural human biological clocks, themselves the result of instructions impressed in the human genome and human cognitive capacity by the physical regularity of fixed cosmic cycles. Considering that a long wave can be conceived as an evolving learning dissipative structure consisting of two successive logistic structural cycles, an innovation cycle and a consolidation cycle, and applying considerations from population dynamics, chaos theory and logistic growth dynamics, a Generational-Learning Model is proposed that permits comprehension of the unfolding and time duration of the phenomenon. The proposed model is based on two kinds of biological constraints that impose the rhythm of collective human behavior — generational and cognitive. The generational consist of biologically based rhythms, namely, the Aggregate Virtual Working Life Tenure and the Aggregate Female Fecundity Interval, both subsets of the normative human life span or human life cycle. The cognitive consist of a limiting learning growth rate, manifest in the alternating sequence of two succeeding learning phases, a new knowledge phase and a consolidation phase. It is proposed that the syncopated beats of succeeding effective generational waves and the dynamics of the learning processes determine the long-wave behavior of socioeconomic growth and development. From the relationship between the differential and the discrete logistic equations, it is demonstrated that the unfolding of each structural cycle of a long wave is controlled by two parameters: the diffusion-learning rate δ and the aggregate effective generation tG, whose product maintained in the interval 3<δtG<4 (deterministic chaos) grants the evolution and performance of social systems. Moreover, it is speculated that the triggering mechanism of this long-term swinging behavior may result from the cohesion loss of a given technoeconomic system in consequence of reaching a threshold value of informational entropy production.

[1]  N. H. Mager.  The Kondratieff Waves , 1986 .

[2]  Ernest Mandel,et al.  Long waves of capitalist development : the Marxist interpretation : based on the Marshall lectures given at the University of Cambridge 1978 , 1980 .

[3]  Harold A. Linstone,et al.  New era — New challenge , 1994 .

[4]  Kenyon B. De Greene,et al.  Evolutionary structure in the informational environmental field of large-scale human systems , 1993 .

[5]  Alfred Kleinknecht,et al.  New Findings in Long-Wave Research , 1993 .

[6]  J. Schumpeter,et al.  Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process , 1940 .

[7]  Andrew Tylecote,et al.  The Long Wave in the World Economy: The Present Crisis in Historical Perspective. , 1994 .

[8]  B. Berry,et al.  Leadership generations: A long-wave macrohistory , 1994 .

[9]  R. Kendell.  The next 25 years , 2000, British Journal of Psychiatry.

[10]  R. Banks.  Growth and diffusion phenomena , 1993 .

[11]  Theodore J. Gordon,et al.  The management of chaotic systems , 1994 .

[12]  G. Modelski,et al.  The Long Cycle of Global Politics and the Nation-State , 1978, Comparative Studies in Society and History.

[13]  C. Marchetti.  Notes on the limits to knowledge explored with Darwinian logic , 1998 .

[14]  C. Mallmann,et al.  Generational Explanation of Long-Term “Billow-Like” Dynamics of Societal Processes , 1998 .

[15]  Joseph F. Coates.  Connections: James Burke, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1978, hardcover $17.95, paperback $10.95 , 1980 .

[16]  Sally J. Goerner.  Chaos and the Evolving Ecological Universe , 1994 .

[17]  J. Mill.  Principles of Political Economy , 2011, Forerunners of Realizable Values Accounting in Financial Reporting.

[18]  W. Rostow.  Kondratieff, Schumpeter, and Kuznets: Trend Periods Revisited , 1975, The Journal of Economic History.

[19]  Harold A. Linstone.  Decision making for technological executives: using multiple perspectives to improve performance [Review Reviews] , 2000, IEEE Trans. Engineering Management.

[20]  James Gleick.  Chaos: Making a New Science , 1987 .

[21]  Frank C. Mahncke.  Making a New Science , 1988 .

[22]  C. Marchetti,et al.  Society as a Learning System : Discovery, Invention, and Innovation Cycles Revisited : Technological Forecasting and Social Change , 1980 .

[23]  J. Duncan.  Chemistry of Social Interactions , 1999 .

[24]  T. Modis,et al.  Genetic re-engineering of corporations , 1997 .

[25]  Theodore J. Gordon,et al.  The prospects for accuracy and completeness in forecasting , 1999 .

[26]  Ian I. Mitroff,et al.  The Challenge of the 21st Century: Managing Technology and Ourselves in a Shrinking World , 1994 .

[27]  Jay W. Forrester,et al.  Business structure, economic cycles, and national policy , 1976 .

[28]  C. Freeman.  Technical change and future trends in the world economy , 1993 .

[29]  A. Kleinknecht.  Long waves, depression and innovation , 1986 .

[30]  Brian J. L. Berry,et al.  Long-Wave Rhythms in Economic Development and Political Behavior , 1992 .

[31]  Louis E. Yelle.  THE LEARNING CURVE: HISTORICAL REVIEW AND COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY , 1979 .

[32]  Theodore Modis,et al.  Chaoslike states can be expected before and after logistic growth , 1992 .

[33]  Harold A. Linstone,et al.  Complexity science: Implications for forecasting , 1999 .

[34]  A Gale of Creative Destruction: The Coming Economic Boom, 1992-2020 , 1989 .

[35]  Jesse H. Ausubel,et al.  Carrying Capacity: A Model with Logistically Varying Limits , 1999 .

[36]  William R. Thompson,et al.  Leading Sectors and World Powers: The Coevolution of Global Economics and Politics , 1996 .

[37]  Joshua S. Goldstein.  Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age , 1988 .

[38]  R. C. O. Matthews,et al.  The Long Wave in Economic Life. , 1982 .

[39]  Theodore J. Gordon.  Chaos in social systems , 1992 .

[40]  Mark Blaug,et al.  The international library of critical writings in economics , 1990 .

[41]  B. Berry,et al.  Are long waves driven by techno-economic transformations?: Evidence for the U.S. and the U.K. , 1993 .

[42]  John R. Weeks,et al.  Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues , 1978 .

[43]  H. Danielmeyer.  The development of the industrial society , 1997, European Review.

[44]  Theodore J. Gordon.  Notes on forecasting a chaotic series using regression , 1991 .

[45]  W. Thompson.  Contending Approaches to World System Analysis , 1983 .

[46]  S. Winter,et al.  In search of useful theory of innovation , 1993 .

[47]  Cesare Marchetti,et al.  Fifty-year pulsation in human affairs: Analysis of some physical indicators , 1986 .

[48]  M. Abramovitz.  The Nature and Significance of Kuznets Cycles , 1961, Economic Development and Cultural Change.

[49]  Francisco Louçã,et al.  The foundations of long wave theory : models and methodology , 1999 .

[50]  C. Marchetti.  INFRASTRUCTURES FOR MOVEMENT: PAST AND FUTURE , 1988 .

[51]  Nebojsa Nakicenovic,et al.  Long Waves, Technology Diffusion, and Substitution , 1991 .

[52]  K. B. D. Greene.  The rocky path to complex-systems indicators , 1994 .

[53]  Arnulf Grubler,et al.  Technology and global change , 1998 .

[54]  Theodore Modis,et al.  Limits to Cycles and Harmony in Revolutions , 1998 .

[55]  T. Malthus.  Essay on the Principle of Population , 2001 .

[56]  C. Marchetti,et al.  Human population dynamics revisited with the logistic model: How much can be modeled and predicted? , 1996 .

[57]  Theodore J. Gordon,et al.  Chaos and fractals: New tools for technological and social forecasting , 1988 .

[58]  Craig S. Volland.  A comprehensive theory of long wave cycles , 1987 .

[59]  Vincent Barnett.  Kondratiev and the Dynamics of Economic Development , 1998 .

[60]  Ali Bulent Cambel,et al.  Applied Chaos Theory: A Paradigm for Complexity , 1992 .

[61]  Brian J. L. Berry,et al.  A Pacemaker for the Long Wave , 2000 .

[62]  J. C. Fisher,et al.  A simple substitution model of technological change , 1971 .

[63]  Simon Kuznets,et al.  Secular Movements In Production And Prices , 1930 .

[64]  Alfred Kleinknecht,et al.  Kondratieff long waves in aggregate output?: an econometric test , 1983 .

[65]  Carlota Perez,et al.  Structural change and assimilation of new technologies in the economic and social systems , 1983 .

[66]  Euel W. Elliott,et al.  Long-Wave Economic Cycles, Techno-Economic Paradigms, and the Pattern of Reform in American Public Administration , 1999 .

[67]  H. Linstone.  TFSC: 1969–1999 , 1999 .