[The Problems of Economic Conditions = Voprosy Koniunktury]. Vol. III, Issue 1.  

Edited by Professor N. Kondratiev. 

Moskva, [Conjuncture Institute], Finansovoe izdatelstvo NKF SSSR, 1927.
8vo, 168 pp.

In original wrappers.
In good condition, light wear to covers, dogears, losses to spin, owner signature to front cover.

One of 2 000 copies printed. One of four volumes printed between 1925 and 1928.

The first publication of one of the seminal works by the renowned economist Evgeny Slutsky (1880-1948), titled 'The Summation of Random Causes as the Source of Cyclical Processes'. 

In this study, Slutsky introduces the idea that economic cycles, such as Kondratiev waves, can arise from the summation of random fluctuations.
A key conclusion from this work is now known as the 'Slutsky-Yule Effect', named after Slutsky and British statistician George Udny Yule, who published a related paper. Interestingly, in the 1910s, a young Slutsky, along with his friend Nikolay Chetverikov and under the guidance of Alexander Chuprov, had planned to translate Yule's 'An Introduction to the Theory of Statistics' into Russian.
In 1926, Slutsky joined the Conjuncture Institute at the invitation of Nikolay Kondratiev, where he applied his mathematical expertise to the study of economic cycles. The Conjuncture Institute, founded by Kondratiev, was the leading center for economic research in Russia during the 1920s. However, due to the political climate surrounding the Institute, Slutsky was unable to discuss the economic details of his model in his published article. By 1930, the Institute was closed, and most of its affiliated economists and statisticians were convicted, while others were forced to change their fields of study. Kondratiev himself was sentenced to eight years in prison, where he continued to engage with Slutsky’s theories.
All printed materials from the Conjuncture Institute were banned after its closure in 1930, making this work extremely rare.
A full English version of this article was published in 'Econometrica' in 1937, with some revisions. The publication was overseen by Ragnar Frisch, the first Nobel Laureate in Economics and founder of 'Econometrica'. Slutsky maintained a decade-long correspondence with Frisch (letters in German and English are now preserved in Oslo), during which they explored similar themes. Frisch later recognized Slutsky’s article as a groundbreaking contribution to the field of time-series analysis.
Slutsky is also renowned for his contributions to marginal utility theory. He defended his thesis, 'The Theory of Marginal Utility', in 1911. As an addition to Vilfredo Pareto’s 'Considerazioni sui principii fondamentali dell'economia politica pura' (1892-1893), Slutsky published an important article in 1915 titled 'Sulla teoria del bilancio del consumatore' in 'Giornale degli Economisti' (Vol. 51, No. 1). This work introduced what is now known as the 'Slutsky Equation' or 'Slutsky Identity' but remained relatively unknown until the early 1930s.
As R.G.D. Allen remarked, 'He [Slutsky] opened up new areas but left them to be explored by others, and the exploration even now is far from complete' (Econometrica, vol. 18, no. 3, July 1950).
This particular copy comes from the library of Nikolay Chetverikov (1885-1973), an economist who collaborated with Kondratiev at the Conjuncture Institute. Chetverikov was a student of Aleksandr Chuprov and specialized in mathematical statistics, contributing to the data calculations for Kondratiev’s model of business cycles. Like many of his colleagues, Chetverikov was convicted in the 1930s and, after a brief release, was imprisoned again. In the 1960s, he focused on the study of illusory correlation. Chetverikov was also a close friend and biographer of Slutsky.

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