Ok, weird (and likely to be boring) topic, I know, but it is justified. Allow me to explain.

Today I went to watch a presentation given by a research student at University, the reason I went was that I myself have recently become a research student and I wanted to see someone who is experienced give a presentation so I can learn from it. The subject of the presentation was the exercising habits of overweight children (Nothing to do with what I'm doing, I was just observing). What struck me was the way that the a lot of the information was expressed as a wave, and because it was expressed as a wave it made the information far far more accessible to someone like me who had no prior knowledge about the subject.

Anyway, on the bus home I was reading about the end of the recession in the newspaper and I this got me thinking about how the economy could be expressed like the information I was given in the presentation. So my question is...

Can the economy be expressed as a wave? And what can we learn about it by expressing it like that?

I thought to myself that the economy has the right factors to be expressed as a wave, it has frequency, amplitude, troughs, peaks, etc... If the economy was expressed as a wave it would be really easy to ascertain information from it for people who don't understand the economy, like me.

...

For example, taking a recent thread in the news, I thought that bailing out the banks and car manufacturers could be analysed more easily by Joe Public if you could express both situations as a wave, which could make it easy for people to base their opinion on it. 

If the decision to bail out the banks and car manufacturers was given the go ahead, then the result could be expressed as a sine wave with low amplitude and low frequency, because the effects of bailing them out would prolong the recession, but also limit the damage. The graph could be expressed like this...

However, if we decided not to bail them out, then the effect would be that the economy crashes and grows again with larger amplitude and frequency (and perhaps even standard deviation), it could be expressed as a sawtooth wave, like this...

I think expressing the effects of bailing out the banks and other large companies like this is an extremely accessible way of analysing the effects it will have on the economy.

I don't know, what do you think?

I actually always thought of it that way.

Yes, it is represented as a wave - it's called the trade cycle. It's essentially a wave that's constantly trending upwards.

^ Yes, I can see now that it is represented by a wave. Unfortunately, I'm not very good when it comes to economics .

...

*Urgh* I just read through my OP again, I think it may be the single dumbest thing I have ever wrote. I don't know what I was thinking when I saw the 'post' button and thought "Yes, I will post this".

I should have just Googled it before I asked.

The funny thing is, when you made that post, and you hit that button, you subconsciously made an economic analysis (cost-benefit analysis), and decided that, yes, it would be in your best interest to post.

To say that your not very good with economics is false, every decision you've ever made was an economic one. Not economics in the way that most people think of it: dealing with unemployment, inflation, or what-have-you, but by doing a simple analysis that will decide whether it is in the best interest of yourself to perform the action.

When you get up to make a cup of tea, for example, it's because you've come to the conclusion that the benefit derived from drinking that cup of tea is greater than the costs involved in getting up and actually having to make it.

Everybody, by nature, is good at economics. The study of "economics", imo, is merely taking the way that humans work and applying it to how our institutions work.

Its called the business cycle. Its a well established principle of economics.

Businesses grow, create jobs, provide new and valuable services
Businesses get big, continue to contribute
Businesses get too big, outdated, or corrupt
Businesses suffer problems, lose revenue from sales or inefficiency, or lose good employees
Businesses go bankrupt creating a recession or bubble
New businesses grow from ashes and/or old businesses re-organize

And the cycle begins. For every bankruptcy there is a business to take its place. That is why a lot of us libertarians believe that the proper order of the cycle is to let bad and corrupt businesses fail. After all, no business that is being properly run should fail. A great example is the US auto industry's 'Big 3'. There is not a better example of the business cycle, and their failures. Of course, the only part is that they're stuck at the 'suffering problems, lose revenue from bad business models/low revenue'

You can look at many businesses that complete that cycle on a very long term basis. Look at 80's Apple vs. 90's Apple vs. 00's Apple. Guess what '10's able is going to probably be?

Ultimately, you need failure to access good business practices and viable models.

In regards to your sine wave idea, you are inherently wrong.

The assumption is that through bailouts, the damage is reduced, but growth back to 'maximal' is always achieved, albiet at longer intervals. The truth is that may be wrong. The idea is that through the bailouts the businesses get fixed. That is not always the case. Thats the problem. If you bail out a business, you don't fix the problem. You only mitigate risk, which means that the business may not grow to maximal capacity.

A great example of this cycle are heavy socialist/communist countries. I'm not talking Europe, but China, USSR, Venezuala and others. They have, or have had at one time, the full idea of statism for bailouts and production quotas. The problem is that when its integrated strongly....Efficency takes a major nosedive, and you have major economic problems as we've seen in the history of states that use that economic model.

YOU MEAN A FUCKING BUSINESS CYCLE?????!!!!
*bangs head on wall*

Lol sorry, bit of an over reaction.

Yes, the old expression riding the wave comes to mind. Mainly, it is standard ebb and flow biz cycles.