The biological determinants of long-wave behavior in socioeconomic growth and development

In this paper, it is claimed that the effective causality of long-term macr oeconomic rhythms, most commonly referred to as long waves or Kondratieff w aves, is founded in our biological realm. The observed patterns of regulari ty in human affairs, manifest as socioeconomic rhythms and recurrent phenom ena, are constrained and codetermined by our natural human biological clock s, themselves the result of instructions impressed in the human genome and human cognitive capacity by the physical regularity of fixed cosmic cycles. Considering that a long wave can be conceived as an evolving learning diss ipative structure consisting of two successive logistic structural cycles, an innovation cycle and a consolidation cycle, and applying considerations from population dynamics, chaos theory and logistic growth dynamics, a Gene rational-Learning Model is proposed that pen-nits comprehension of the unfo lding and time duration of the phenomenon. The proposed model is based on t wo kinds of biological constraints that impose the rhythm of collective hum an behavior - generational and cognitive. The generational consist of biolo gically based rhythms, namely, the Aggregate Virtual Working Life Tenure an d the Aggregate Female Fecundity! Interval, both subsets of the normative h uman life span or human life cycle. The cognitive consist of a limiting tea ming growth rate, manifest in the alternating sequence of two succeeding le arning phases, a new knowledge phase and a consolidation phase. It is propo sed that the syncopated beats of succeeding effective generational waves an d the dynamics of the teaming processes determine the long-wave behavior of socioeconomic growth and development. From the relationship between the di fferential and the discrete logistic equations, it is demonstrated that the unfolding of each structural cycle of a long wave is controlled by two par ameters: the diffusion-learning rate 6 and the aggregate effective generati on t(G), whose product maintained in the interval 3 < deltat(G) < 4 (determ inistic chaos) grants the evolution and performance of social systems. More over, it is speculated that the triggering mechanism of this long-term swin ging behavior may result from the cohesion loss of a given technoeconomic s ystem in consequence of reaching a threshold value of informational entropy production. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.