As Time Goes By

Chris Freeman is Emeritus Professor at the University of Sussex and was the founder and former Director of SPRU (1966-81). SPRU has become one of the leading world centres for research on technical change. After war-time service in the Manchester Regiment and experience in market research, Chris Freeman became a Research Fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (1959-66), and later a Visiting Professor at the University of Limburg, Maastricht.Francisco Louçã is a Portuguese Member of Parliament, serving in the Economic and Budgetary Commission. He obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Lisbon, under the supervision of Chris Freeman. His thesis, entitled Turbulence in Economics has since been published in both English and Portuguese (Edward Elgar/Afrontamento, 1997).

Review from previous edition This major contribution to economic history is the most impressive and convincing attempt I know to apply the concept of the 'long waves', a basic rhythm of historical development in the era of capitalism, to the entire stretch from eighteenth-century Lancashire to twenty-first-century Silicon Valley. It is also a call for economic history to escape from the handcuffs of narrow retrospective econometrics to the freedom of its vocation: understanding and explaining secular historical transformations.

• PART I: HISTORY AND ECONOMICS; PART II: SUCCESSIVE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS