This article presents a detailed synthesis of the business cycle theories, from its origins to the current period. On the basis of the traditional approaches, we present successively the statistical analysis of the business cycle, the major authors, the period of the Trente Glorieuses, the long...

The answer to the question, whether long waves exist or not depends mainly on the statistical methods used for analysis. Since the seminal work of Kondratieff in the 1920th these methods underwent significant changes. The fundamental critic against the traditional approaches in the 1970th lead...