what is a kondratiev wave 
a kondratiev wave is a long term economic cycle in commodity prices and other prices believed to result from technological innovation that produces a long period of prosperity alternating with economic decline this theory was founded by nikolai d kondratiev also spelled kondratieff an agricultural economist who noticed agricultural and industrial commodity prices experienced long term cycles kondratiev believed that these cycles involved periods of evolution and self correction 12also known as kondratieff wave supercycle k wave surge or long wave understanding kondratiev waveskondratiev s research into the pricing of agricultural commodities led him to investigate historical prices of wheat and other crops in major european grain markets where price records had been maintained he managed to collect almost 150 years worth of data on commodity prices from various markets kondratiev combined these data sets of reported market prices together to make long time series of price data he then transformed the resulting data series from raw price data into moving averages as well as the rates of change of prices and their respective moving averages kondratiev hoped to explore the long term characteristics and trends in prices by doing this to the data in this way kondratiev was able to identify what he believed to be a regular wave like pattern in commodity prices with a period of approximately 50 years he asserted that two full cycles could be observed in his data the first running from 1790 1849 and a second from 1850 1896 and that world commodity markets were about mid way through a third wave he hoped to use insights gained from the patterns he observed to help with soviet planning of prices and production in the economy of the u s s r 3however kondratiev s theory was not welcomed his views were disliked by communist officials because they suggested that capitalist nations were not on an inevitable path to destruction but that they instead only experienced ups and downs kondratiev was also an enthusiastic proponent of lenin s new economic policy which reintroduced markets for some goods and services after the early disastrous failures of economic central planning in the soviet economy but was anathematized with stalin s rise to power as a result of his economic ideas kondratiev was sentenced to 8 years in a prison near moscow upon completion of his sentence he was retried and sentenced to a further 10 years but instead of being imprisoned he was shot to death by nkvd soviet secret police agents at the kommunarka execution grounds in moscow 45later application of kondratiev s theorysome later economists have taken interest in kondratiev s theory though it remains more popular with non economically trained investors that economists various proponents of these ideas often disagree on the timing direction and causal factors involved some financial and economic forecasters have attempted to make use of kondratiev waves and similar theories in their predictive models in his book economic cycles joseph schumpeter argued that a series of wave like patterns of different lengths including kondratiev waves in addition to other shorter waves could explain historical and cyclical trends in the economy he attributed technological innovation as the primary driver of kondratiev waves 1