Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/223184 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
Working Papers of the Priority Programme 1859 "Experience and Expectation. Historical Foundations of Economic Behaviour" No. 3
Publisher: 
Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin
Abstract: 
The recognition of the key importance of economic stability after World War I sparked interest in business forecasting on both sides of the Atlantic. This article explores the creation and the rapid international and domestic dissemination of the Harvard Index of General Business Conditions in the early 1920s, which contemporaries celebrated as the first "scientific" approach to business forecasting. Drawing on multi-site archival research, the paper analyses the extension of the index by an information-exchange-based method in the 1920s and traces its influence on the survey-based forecasting approach employed by American companies in the 1930s. Engaging with the current debate on the temporal order of capitalism, the article argues that business forecasting was not only a means of stabilizing capitalism, but a factor and an indicator of a change in the dynamics of capitalism in the interwar period.
Subjects: 
Prognose
Konjunkturforschung
Kapitalismus
Konsumforschung
Wirtschaftskrisen
Wissensgeschichte
Zukunft
forecasting
future
business cycle research
capitalism
consumer research
historical epistemology
material practices
Harvard Economic Service
London and Cambridge Economic Service
League of Nations
General Motors
JEL: 
B00
B10
B20
B41
N01
N40
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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