Tugan-Baranovsky’s Business Cycle Theory and French Economists: Inspiration and Legacy

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to emphasize the contribution of Mykhaylo Ivanovych Tugan-Baranovsky to Business Cycle theory and its legacy among French economists.Tugan-Baranovsky (1864–1919), a prominent Ukrainian economist was a cycle theorist who was inspired by some French or francophone economists whose language he mastered. His theory of industrial crises proved influential upon some major economists during the first quarter of the twentieth century until the Great Depression, from Spiethoff to Hayek and Keynes.We present both the history and analytical content of industrial crises in the French version of Tugan-Baranovsky’s masterpiece. We provide an overview of Tugan-Baranovsky’s intellectual legacy as for his French-speaking followers, namely, Lescure, Aftalion, Robertson and Bouniatian. The ebb and tide of Tugan-Baranovsky’s i fluence can be understood throughout two episodes: the shift from real to monetary cycles in the interwar period and the revival of real business cycles alongside New Classical Economics in the 1980s, which proves relevant again in the context of the current Great Lockdown Recession. JEL classіfіcatіon: B14, E32, N13