Throughout the 1920s and '30s, many economists were preoccupied by a topic given poignancy by the dramatic economic ups and downs experienced by most Western countries following the carnage of the First World War. The origins of what came to be called business cycle theory can be traced back to the late 1810s as some scholars of the time tried to comprehend why there appeared to be periodic crises in the industrial capitalism starting to emerge throughout Europe. In the post-World War I era,