Subjects of the Development of Systemic Economic Crises: Lessons from the 20th Century

The paper attempts to identify the main subjects that contribute to the development of systemic economic crises that occur with the periodicity of N. Kondratiev’s cycles. Catastrophe theory approaches were used to assess the sustainability of economic growth. Econometric models of stable and unstable relationships between economic growth rates and growth rates of personal consumption of the population, government spending and investment were tested. Unstable connections were modeled in the form of equations of the elementary theory of catastrophes. At the same time, models of stable links and models of catastrophes of various types were built. Judgments about instability were made in the case when the catastrophe models turned out to be more deterministic. The obtained estimates of the stability of economic growth suggest that the early development of instability and the creation of prerequisites for an economic crisis were facilitated by the policies of states and the strategies of financial capital. Signs of instability due to these factors are found 25–30 years before the onset of the crisis. Summarizing the results of the study suggests that the strategies of financial capital and the policy of the state as subjects of the economy can contribute to the development of systemic economic crises.