Aus der Einleitung:

The German translation of Tugan-Baranowsky's seminal work on the theory and history of economic crises in England was published in Berlin in 1901. The book represents a violent break with the past. By stressing the role of productive investment as a prime mover in a cycle of prosperity and depression, Tugan Baranowsky turned the tables on the Continental (Sismondian) tradition which was mainly concerned with the underconsumption theory of crises. Likewise, by stressing the importance of real factors in the movements of the economy he turned the tables on the Continental and British traditions which were mainly concerned with the phenomena of trade, finance and money as the causes of crises. The book started a stream of thinking among Continental economists which finally emerged as part of the modern theory of the business cycle in the Keynesian tradition.

Tugan-Baranowsky's work appears to have been the principal source of inspiration for distinguished analysts of the business cycle like Spiethoff, Cassel, Aftalion and Schumpeter. It had an important influence on the pioneers of long wave theory and provoked a lively discussion among the German social democrats with regard to the theory of crises and the historical limits of the capitalist mode of production.

In spite of all this, Tugan-Baranowsky has only been given a modest place in the hall of fame. In this paper an effort is made to rescue him from oblivion. The second section contains a discussion of Tugan-Baranowsky's novel explanation of economic crises, which is inspired by Marx's analysis of the reproduction process of capital. Tugan-Baranowsky developed his own disproportionality theory as an alternative to two of the principal competing theories, namely the 'underconsumption' − and the 'falling-rate-of-profit' theory of crisis. Attention is paid to these competing theories as well as to Tugan-Baranowsky's criticism of them (section 3). Section 4 is devoted to Tugan-Baranowsky's principal contribution to the explanation of the periodicity of economic crises and of the mechanism underlying the industrial cycle. In section 5 an attempt is made to assess the impact of Tugan-Baranowsky's work on economic crises and the industrial cycle by discussing the work of two influential 'Tugan-Baranowskyans', namely Arthur Spiethoff and Gustav Cassel. In the concluding section attention is paid to the way in which Tugan-Baranowsky's ideas have trickled down into the history of business cycle theory. Besides his impact on Spiethoff and Cassel, his influence can be traced in the work of such important theorists like Schumpeter, Aftalion, Mitchell, Keynes and beyond.