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Business cycle theory is normally described as having evolved out of a previous tradition of writers focusing exclusively on crises. In this account, the turning point is seen as residing in Clément Juglar's contribution on commercial crises and their periodicity. It is well known that the champion of this view is Schumpeter, who propagated it on several occasions. The same author, however, pointed to a number of other writers who, before and at the same time as Juglar, stressed one or another of the aspects for which Juglar is credited primacy, including the recognition of periodicity and the identification of endogenous elements enabling the recognition of crises as a self-generating phenomenon. There is indeed a vast literature, both primary and secondary, relating to the debates on crises and fluctuations around the middle of the nineteenth century, from which it is apparent that Juglar's book Des Crises Commerciales et de leur Retour Périodique en France, en Angleterre et aux États-Unis (originally published in 1862 and very much revised and enlarged in 1889) did not come out of the blue but was one of the products of an intellectual climate inducing the thinking of crises not as unrelated events but as part of a more complex phenomenon consisting of recurring crises related to the development of the commercial world – an interpretation corroborated by the almost regular occurrence of crises at about 10-year intervals.

The purpose of the chapter is to compare social and economic effects that accompany crises of economic systems.

According to the adopted classification of causes of conflicts of socio-economic systems, the indicators that reflect potential social and economic causes of crisis are determined. Regression analysis is performed, and multiple regression dependence of economic growth of Russia’s economic system (values of growth of GDP in constant prices) on the indicators that characterize social and economic causes of crisis is determined; correlation analysis is performed and correlation of each indicator of causes and the indicator of economic growth is determined.

It is shown by the example of modern Russia that subjective (social factors) have the key role in determining cyclic fluctuations of economic system – together with objective (economic effects). Social causes of crisis are almost as important as economic causes. In view of generally acknowledged social consequences of crises (growth of inflation and unemployment level), it is possible to state a relatively equal role of economic and social effects that accompany crises of economic systems. The information and empirical basis of the chapter consists of the statistical materials of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the OECD. The research is performed by the example of modern Russia’s economic system; its timeframe covers 1999–2018 (recent 20 years).

The obtained conclusions show the necessity and open perspectives for specifying the existing theory of cycles in the aspect of inclusion of social effects into the model of cyclic (wave) fluctuations of economic systems.

This chapter enquires into the contribution of two British writers, Herbert Somerton Foxwell and Henry Riverdale Grenfell, who elaborated upon the hints provided by Jevons towards a description of long waves in the oscillations of prices. Writing two decades after Jevons, they witnessed the era of high prices turning into the great depression of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the causes of which they saw in the end of bimetallism. Not only did they take up Jevons’s specific explanation of the long fluctuations, but they also based their discussion upon graphical representation of data and incorporated in their treatment a specific trait (the superposition principle) of the ‘waves’ metaphor emphasized by the Manchester statisticians in the 1850s and 1860s. Their contribution is also interesting for their understanding of crises versus depressions at the time of the emergence of the interpretation of oscillations as a cycle, which they have only partially grasped – as distinct from the approach of later long wave theorists.

The purpose of the work is to determine the signs of conflicts in social effects of crises of economic systems and to determine perspectives of studying crises on the basis of the concept of economic conflicts.

For determining the signs of conflicts in social effects of crises of economic systems, this work uses the method of qualitative break-even analysis, the methods of systemic, problem, and structural and functional analysis, and the method of formalization (table presentation of authors’ conclusions).

It is substantiated that social causes and social manifestations and consequences of crises of economic systems have signs of conflicts – violation of balance of socio-economic phenomena and processes and the following negative reaction of economic subjects. Causal connections of distribution of conflicts within social effects of crises of economic systems are determined and a preferable method of their regulation is offered.

A new method of state regulation of socio-economic system for overcoming its crisis and crisis management is offered. An advantage and essential difference of this method from the traditional one is influence on social cause of crisis (not on its economic and social consequences), due to which it is possible to quickly overcome the crisis and reduce the risk of its renewal.

The symptoms that precede crises are utterly undistinguishable from the signs of great prosperity; ventures and speculations of all sorts proliferate; the price of products, the value of land and houses rise; the demand for labor increases and wage rates augment, interest on the contrary diminishes. Add to that a gullible public – whose doubts vanish at the sight of the first successful undertaking – and a taste for gambling, which spreads as prices continue to rise and as the hope of becoming rich in a short time takes hold of people's imagination. Finally, increasing luxury leads to excess spending, fueled less by greater income than by the higher value of capital estimated at market prices.

Juglar's entry on “commercial crises” appeared in Maurice Block's Dictionnaire général de la politique … avec la collaboration d’hommes d’État, de publicistes et d’écrivains de tous les pays.⁶ The dictionary went through two editions – in 1863 and 1873 (with a reprint of the second edition in 1884). One of the most remarkable features of these articles is that they sum up the 258 pages of the first edition of Juglar's Des crises commerciales in only 13 pages. Although they are not numerous, the changes that Juglar introduced in the second edition are important, as they testify to the work he did in that decade on banking and foreign exchanges.

This chapter examines four possible relationships between the credit crunch and corporate crime. A first relation is that cases of accounting fraud have contributed to the causes of the crisis. Because of these accounting scandals, the trust in large corporations and the financial sector possibly eroded. A second possible relation is the reverse: the crisis leads to more corporate crime. As a result of the crisis, companies run into financial difficulties. In their despair, they possibly cut costs by not complying with business regulations, or they may try to gain illegal profit through fraud. The third relation is the criminalization of more unethical corporate behavior. The moral outrage regarding the behavior of banks and insurance companies that contributed to the crisis might lead to an increased labeling of “risky” or “greedy” behavior of corporate executives as criminal. This results in more legal regulation. The fourth and final relation is that these amplification effects will lead to the discovery of more corporate crime.

As in diseases, a commercial crisis is a critical moment to go through. As soon as embarrassments arise, the question is whether one will resist or one will succumb. A crisis is the touchstone that allows us to gauge the soundness of commercial houses, the size of their commitments and of the resources they possess, in capital or in credit, to face up to them. Thanks to the crisis the market operates a sort of selection; the houses that have lost their balance collapse; the others resist. This is how crises indicate the firms that are dubious and those we can trust. Carried away as people were on the wings of credit, they now regain a foothold, although, alongside the businesses that are still afloat, a large number are now under water.