Growth and Cycles as a Struggle: Lotka-Volterra, Goodwin and Phillips

In this chapter, we describe growth and cycles in economics as a struggle between capitalists and workers. We first present the Phillips curve (which statistically relates unemployment with the rate of change of nominal wages) and then the Goodwin model. The latter reinterprets, in economical terms, the dynamics of biological prey–predator struggle as described by the Lotka–Volterra model. The interaction between the two species reminded Goodwin about the Marxian conflict of class. Goodwin’s model explains cycles in those terms and will be tested in Chap. 19. The Kolmogorov generalization of the prey–predator model and further extensions of the Goodwin model conclude.