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This paper compares four approaches to the relationship between structural change and crisis. The first two traditional contributions are those of Marx and Schumpeter. Marx links the propensity of capitalist economies toward crises to the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. For Schumpeter, the business cycle mirrors the discontinuity of structural change (evolution). These views are then compared to those of the Regulation School. The Regulationists relate major crises to the deficient balance of the structural evolution of labor productivity and real wages. The balance between these two variables must be insured historically by specific sets of institutions called "Regulations". Thus, major crises provoke in turn the transformation of the institutional framework. We contend that a tendency exists in capitalism toward increasing instability (propensity to enter into crisis), due to the progress of management responding to structural change, in particular the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. This increasing instability induces progress in the institutions of macro management of the general level of economic activity. Consequently, the economy is constantly maintained on its stability frontier and, therefore, prone to crisis.

G. Duménil, D. Lévy, "A Note on Structural Change, Economic Dynamics, and Crisis", 1990, Paper Presented at the Conference "Topics in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics", organized by the Editorial Board of Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Universita di Siena : July 13-14, 1990.

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