Cycles in basic innovations

Basic innovations are believed to be one of the drivers of economic growth. In this paper we examine if cycle periods found for economic data correspond with cycles in basic innovations. For an annual time series of count data on innovations covering 1764–1976, we fit a harmonic Poisson regression model. We find the presence of multiple cycles with periods 5, 13, 24, 34 and 61, and these show a remarkable resemblance with commonly found economic cycles.