This chapter examines the features of the six earliest articles on commercial crises published in economic dictionaries and in encyclopedias, 1835-42. It is noted that they offered the very first definitions of ‘crises' found in the literature, although the conception was still rather trivial,...

Although Gerolamo Boccardo did not contribute an original theory of crises in his own Dizionario della economia politica (1857) - he relied, in fact, on the one formulated a few years earlier by Charles Coquelin - he introduced some interesting innovations. In particular, he examined the...

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...