The American economist Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874-1948) was one of the most prominent contributors to the study of business cycles and was also among those who first recognized the importance of sound empirical research in economics. Born on Aug. 5,...

A leading US INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMIST who laid the foundations for modern studies of the BUSINESS CYCLE. Educated at Chicago University, professor at the Universities of California (1903–13) and Columbia (1913–19 and 1922–44) and...

Wesley Clair Mitchell (August 5, 1874 – October 29, 1948) was an American economist known for his empirical work on business cycles and for guiding the National Bureau of Economic Research in its first decades. Wesley Mitchell was born in...

Most neoclassical economists believe that Wesley Clair Mitchell had no theory of the business cycle; according to Milton Friedman, "Mitchell is generally considered primarily an empirical scientist rather than a theorist" (Burns 1952, 237). The reason is that Mitchell's theory was not a...

The theory of money economy and the measurement of business cycles presented by Arthur F Burns and Wesley C Mitchell in their 1946 study have been criticized by many economic theorists. These criticisms and Burns and Mitchell's theoretical bases and statistical evidence to support...