‘Periodic Crises’ : Clément Juglar between Theories of Crises and Theories of Business Cycles

This article examines the contribution of Clément Juglar to the theory of periodic crises in the context of the evolution of the doctrine towards the middle of the nineteenth century. Juglar's original contribution (1862) and its evolution to the final form of his doctrine are described in Section 2. The state of the reflections on the various ingredients of Juglar's approach by his contemporaries are discussed in Section 3, which shows that on most counts Juglar was only taking up development that were common ground for most writers at the time (e.g., his reference to periodicity, his reliance on overtrading and speculation, his reference to prosperity as the 'natural' state of the system, the usage of medical metaphors, etc.) or was preceded by other writers (e.g. in his reflections on causality and instability).Section 4 discusses Juglar's position in the transition from the theories of crises of the nineteenth century to the theories of cycles of the twentieth century. It is suggested that such a division of the field in two parts is not really adequate to characterize the development of the theory, and that a four-fold partition is necessary, as the theories of 'recurring crises' (such as Juglar's) are different from both the theories prevalent in the early nineteenth century, which saw crises as disconnected events, and the theories of the cycle, which saw not only crises as recurring following the same scheme, but as following a recurrent causal scheme, with each phase non only succeeding each other, but causing it. Section 5 draws some conclusions on the role of Juglar in the history of business cycle theories, showing that this is not straightforward as it is commonly depicted