Stock market performance and manufacturing capability of the fifth long-cycle industries

Abstract

Nearly 80 years ago Russian economist, Kondratieff, introduced the theory of economic long-cycles. Since from the start, this theory has faced controversial acceptance; for example, in the future studies researchers have used it to develop further specific applications, but in economics some leading scientists reject the entire idea still. Although, this theory is well developed, there does not exist research from the examination of relation between stock market performance, and leading innovation cycle industries manufacturing capacity addition and utilization. Based on the system dynamics model, called world dynamics, capacity addition and utilization have earlier been identified as the leading indicators of long-cycles. Our research results in this paper indicate that capacity utilization of computer manufacturing in US, and in some cases of US semiconductors, has influence on the stock market indexes of Nasdaq, S&P500 and Dow. However, it should be noted that capacity investment changes of these three examined industries (semiconductors, computers and telecommunications) are involved in the proposed regression models too. Further analysis reveals, that we are able to build regression models for all three stock indexes, containing only two variables. Notably, these two variables are capacity addition change in semiconductors and computers. This observation further increases discussion, whether we should be interested only about capacity addition changes of innovation wave industries, and possibly give secondary importance for the utilization.