Joseph Kitchin, 1861-1932, was a British statistician and businessman. In his “Cycles and Trends in Economic Factors”, 1923, he carried out a study on business cycles, in Britain and in the United States, between 1890-1922. Kitchin was able to identify evidences of the existence of very short business cycle, the so-called Kitchin cycle. These cycles have a duration of approximately 40 months, and he explained them as a result of psychological reactions to capitalistic production, and time lags in information, which affect the firms’ decision making process on commercial affairs. In other words, this cycle responded to the adjustment between supply and demand in terms of market necessity and firms response.
