Investment, Business Cycles and Growth

Abstract

Throughout his career as an economist, Kalecki saw investment as a subject of great importance. The links between investment and the business cycle were the subject of his first major papers published in English (Kalecki, 1935b) and in French (Kalecki, 1935a) and of one of his last (Kalecki, 1968b), and ‘there is a continuous search for new solutions in the theory of investment decisions’ (Kalecki, 1971a, p. viii). He regarded the ‘determination of investment decisions by, broadly speaking, the level and the rate of change of economic activity … (as) the central pièce de resistance of economics’ (Kalecki, 1971 a, p. 165). His writings on socialist planning also generally concentrated on investment and growth (as indicated in Chapter 11 below).