Technology and Business Cycles: A Schumpeterian Investigation for the USA

The purpose of this paper is to deal with questions of instability and economic crisis, deriving theoretical arguments from Schumpeter’s works and presenting relevant empirical evidence for the case of the US economy by sector of economic activity in the time period 1957-2006, just before the first signs of the global recession made their appearance. More precisely, we make an attempt to interpret the economic fluctuations in the US economy by sector of economic activity and find causal relationships between the crucial variables dictated by Schumpeterian theory. In this context, a number of relevant techniques have been used, such as cointegration analysis, periodograms, Granger causality tests as well as stepwise bi-directional causality test a la Dufour and Renault. Our findings seem to give credit to certain aspects of the Schumpeterian theory of business cycles. The results are discussed in a broader context, related to the US sectoral economy.