The article presents a verbal and mathematical model of medium-term business cycles (with a characteristic period of 7–11 years) known as Juglar cycles. The model takes into account a number of approaches to the analysis of such cycles; in the meantime it also takes into account some of the authors' own generalizations and additions that are important for understanding the internal logic of the cycle, its variability and its peculiarities in the present-time conditions. The authors argue that the most important cause of cyclical crises stems from strong structural disproportions that develop during economic booms. These are not only disproportions between different economic sectors, but also disproportions between different societal subsystems; at present these are also disproportions within the World System as a whole.
History & Mathematics: Processes and Models of Global Dynamics / Edited by Leonid Grinin, Peter Herrmann, Andrey Korotayev, and Arno Tausch. – Volgograd: ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House, 2010. Pp. 138–187.