General and Periodic Crises of Overproduction
Jean Lescure author D’Maris Coffman editor Nicholas Di Liberto editor Ali Kabiri editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Anthem Press
Published:14th Nov '23
Should be back in stock very soon
Jean Lescure’s two-volume General and Periodic Crises of Overproduction is a pioneering study of the causes and consequences of industrial crises in capitalist economies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author, who held doctorates in political economy and law, is most remembered as a founder of the French historical school and a staunch advocate of empiricism in the economic sciences. Lescure called his approach the ’complex historical method’, by which he sought to revise classical and quantitative economic theory through the historical analysis and statistical observation of cyclical phenomena. Ever the controversialist, Lescure wrote in an engaging style, accessible to non-specialists and economists alike, and critiqued the leading monetary theorists of the period, insisting that observation of the movements in production costs, industrial orders and profits be given priority over circulation and credit in understanding the periodic crises of capitalist economies. In Lescure’s view, crises were inevitable in both market and command economies and their onset and consequences were predictable with the help of the more detailed production statistics newly available to economists and entrepreneurs at the time. Observation of corporate profits, the margin between cost price and selling price, provided the means to predict crises and measure their impact, not only on industry and trade but also on the working classes who would endure unemployment and the many social ills that accompany it. Lescure, unlike many of the liberal economists of the time, was always careful to include in his historical account statistical analysis of unemployment figures, as well as those on crime, marriage and birth rates, homelessness and suicide. Although he remained sceptical of government intervention in the form of monetary policies adjusting the money supply, and lauded the success of industrial concentration and trusts in reducing costs and prices, Lescure admitted the state’s role in the recovery of the 1930s, when social insurance schemes and investment in public works mitigated the worst effects of unemployment for industrial labour.
This treatise, which grew out of his doctoral work, was a lifetime project for Lescure, who updated it periodically over five editions, to include each new cycle of growth, crisis, depression and recovery. Volume one provides a historical study of economic crises from the post-Napoleonic period through the Great Depression and...
This first authoritative English scholarly edition of Jean Lescure’s seminal work on business cycles is essential reading for all who study economics and and markets. Lescure showed that to understand market success and periodic failure, economists had to take a historical view, using high quality, long-term statistics— Jacob Soll, University Professor and Professor of Philosophy, History, and Accounting, University of Southern California
“Lescure’s book is a powerful historical reminder that ‘the study of the general movement of business cannot dispense with the study of the main branches of production.’ Aggregate dynamics cannot be detached from the transformation of internal structures. This entails that the theory and the policy of economic fluctuations need a multisectoral viewpoint. The co-editors have done an admirable job and have provided an outstanding introductory essay.” — Alberto Quadrio Curzio, Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy
This book is a classic in the empirics and theory of industrial fluctuations and an English translation has been long overdue. Its emphasis on overheating as the primary signal and cause of an approaching crisis is combined with a detailed reconstruction of the role of different industries in economic fluctuations. Lescure’s core and most valuable lesson is that the analysis of industrial crises must combine the sectoral and the macro levels of investigation, and that multi- layered interdependence provides the key for the differential diffusion of crises across industrial sectors and economic systems— Roberto Scazzieri, National Lincei Academy and University of Bologna Gonville and Caius College and Clare Hall, Cambridge.
‘Jean Lescure’s Des Crises is a lively and original blend of historical narrative, statistical evidence and contextually grounded theoretical construction that revolves around interde-pendencies between sectors and countries. The work is wonderfully contextualized and translated in this first English edition, which will be of great interest to students of economic crises.’ — Ivano Cardinale, Reader in Economics, Goldsmiths, University of London
‘Lescure’s book belongs to the early nineteenth-century literature on economic fluctuations, but is of striking actuality for its discussion of market and sectoral interdependencies within and between nations; generalized crises; and contagion in a globalized world. The editors and the translator deserve the gratitude of economists, historians and historians of economic thought for this edition of a classic treatise that may have suffered from a language barrier thus far.’ — Lilia Costabile, University of Naples Federico II and Clare Hall, Cambridge
This English version not only increases access; it supports the reader to navigate the text more easily. - History of Economic Thought and Policy
ISBN: 9781839988301
Dimensions: 229mm x 153mm x 29mm
Weight: 454g
532 pages