Joseph A. Schumpeter, „Konjunkturforschung“ (1926)

Schumpeter’s 1926 essay presents Konjunkturforschung as a meeting point between commercial foresight and economic theory. Its immediate occasion is institutional: the founding of German business-cycle research in dialogue with American statistical practice and with Spiethoff’s historical-theoretical work. But the essay’s central distinction is conceptual.

Halten wir vor allem zwei Dinge auseinander, begrifflich wenigstens, von denen das eine aus der geschäftlichen Praxis, das andere aus der Wissenschaft kommt: die Konjunkturprognose und die Krisentheorie.

English translation: Let us above all keep two things apart, at least conceptually, of which one comes from business practice and the other from science: business-cycle forecasting and the theory of crises.

Forecasting begins from the practical needs of business. Schumpeter does not ridicule the merchant’s judgment; he treats it as accumulated experience of a real order in economic life. The businessman survives uncertainty because he senses the conjuncture before he can formalize it.

Vor einem andernfalls ganz untragbaren Risiko, welches geschäftliches Handeln zu einem Hazardspiel machen würde, bewahrt den Geschäftsmann zunächst sein Gefühl für den Stand der Dinge, seine »Nase«.

English translation: What first preserves the businessman from an otherwise wholly unbearable risk—one that would turn business action into a gambling game—is his feeling for the state of things, his 'nose.'

Yet this practical “Nase” is not enough. Nor are charts, indices, or business barometers sufficient by themselves. Schumpeter’s methodological point is that empirical registration must become ordered interpretation. Statistical series become useful for science and practice only when they are arranged by a theory of causal sequence: which phenomena lead, which follow, which are primary, which merely symptomatic.

Sammlung und zahlenmäßige oder graphische Darstellung von Daten ist noch nicht Vorhersage.

English translation: The collection and numerical or graphical presentation of data is not yet prediction.

The essay therefore rejects both extremes: abstract crisis theory without empirical discipline, and empirical curve-reading without theoretical architecture. The best Konjunkturforschung must observe many series, but not heap them indiscriminately. It must ask why some indicators have forecasting power. Schumpeter sees American barometer work, Harvard’s methods, Babson’s practical service, and the National Bureau’s data collection as important precedents, while hoping that German research can improve them by joining statistical refinement to economic analysis.

The second part turns from prognosis to crisis theory, especially Juglar and Spiethoff. Schumpeter distinguishes seasonal fluctuations, secular movements, and longer historical phases from the recurrent alternation of boom and depression. The crisis itself is not the whole object; it is a visible moment within a wave whose essential form is the movement from expansion to contraction and adjustment. This shift matters because it changes the question from “what causes a crash?” to “what causes the cyclical process?”

Here the essay becomes recognizably Schumpeterian. The upswing begins with increased investment, especially in new or expanded enterprises. This investment reorganizes production, raises demand for materials and labor, stimulates derived consumption, and strains the existing equilibrium. Depression is then not simply an accident imposed from outside, but the economy’s adjustment after expansion. External shocks—war, harvests, politics, stabilization problems—can disturb the pattern, but they do not define the normal cycle.

Spiethoff’s importance lies in giving this cycle an empirical order. Schumpeter accepts the search for leading and subsidiary symptoms, with capital investment at the center. Iron consumption, securities markets, credit, employment, interest rates, and prices may all matter, but not equally. Prices, in particular, are treated as mostly derivative, not as the best primary guide to the cycle. The point is not to deny their relevance, but to subordinate them within a causal hierarchy.

The practical and policy implication is restrained. Schumpeter does not promise mechanical certainty, nor does he imagine that economic waves can simply be abolished by monetary management or administrative intervention. Cyclical movement has a developmental function in capitalism. What research can do is reduce avoidable loss by giving businessmen and policymakers a clearer theoretical lens for interpreting the present and anticipating the near future.

Wissenschaft dieser Art ist Praxis der Zukunft.

English translation: Science of this kind is the practice of the future.

Thus the essay defines Konjunkturforschung as applied theory: a disciplined practice of orientation under uncertainty. Its forecasts are probabilistic and historically conditioned, but they are not mere guesswork. They become scientific when statistics, business experience, and crisis theory are made to correct and illuminate one another.