The model of interference of long waves of economic development

The article substantiates the need to develop and analyze mathematical models that take into account the mutual influence of long (Kondratiev) waves of economic development. The analysis of the available publications shows that at the model level, the direct and inverse relationships between intersecting long waves are still insufficiently studied. As practice shows, the production of the current long wave can receive an additional impetus for growth from the technologies of the next long wave. The technologies of the next industrial revolution often serve as improving innovations for the industries born of the previous industrial revolution. As a result, the new long wave increases the amplitude of the oscillations of the trajectory of the previous long wave. Such results of the interaction of long waves in the economy are similar to the effects of interference of physical waves. The mutual influence of the recessions and booms of the economies of different countries gives even more grounds for comparing the consequences of this mutual influence with the interference of physical waves. The article presents a model for the development of the technological base of production, taking into account the possibilities of combining old and new technologies. The model consists of several sub-models. The use of a different mathematical description for the individual stages of updating the technological base of production allows us to take into account the significant differences between the successive phases of the life cycle of general purpose technologies, considered in modern literature as the technological basis of industrial revolutions. One of these phases is the period of formation of the appropriate infrastructure necessary for the intensive diffusion of new general purpose technology, for the rapid development of industries using this technology. The model is used for illustrative calculations with the values of exogenous parameters corresponding to the logic of changing long waves. Despite all the conditionality of the illustrative calculations, the configuration of the curve representing the change in the return on capital in the simulated period is close to the configuration of the real trajectory of the return on private fixed assets of the US economy in the period 1982–2019. The factors that remained outside the scope of the presented model, but which are advisable to take into account when describing the interference of long waves of economic development, are indicated.