The skyscraper index, created by economist Andrew Lawrence shows a correlation between the construction of the world's tallest building and the business cycle. Is this just a coincidence, or perhaps do skyscrapers cause business cycles? A theoretical foundation of “Cantillon effects” for the...

Richard Cantillon was the first economist to successfully examine the cyclical nature of the capitalist economy. He lived at a time (168?–1734) when the institutions of the modern capitalist economy were first fully and widely established and the first major business cycles occurred. In...

There is an emerging literature on the subject of skyscrapers and business cycles. Lawrence (1999) first noticed the correlation between important changes in the economy and the building of record-breaking skyscrapers. Thornton (2005) established a theoretical link between the two phenomena....

In a recent paper in Applied Economics, Barr, Mizrach and Mundra test for the existence of a “Skyscraper Curse”. Their results led the Economist magazine to conclude that you cannot forecast the onset of recessions using the announcement or completion dates of the world's tallest building...