When the New York Stock Exchange crashed in October 1929, setting off what became a world economic crisis, Michał Kalecki and Eugen Varga were working for business cycle research institutes. In Moscow, Varga was Director of the Institute of World Economy and Politics. Kalecki was employed in Warsaw as a consultant on monopolies and cartels at the Institute for Study of Business Cycles and Prices. The Warsaw Institute had been set up in 1928 to provide ‘… the information required to develop a view on the influences affecting the changing economic situation … [through] the study of the economy as a whole in order to determine, after eliminating seasonal changes, in what stages of the economic cycle—stagnation, upswing, boom or crisis the economy is in at any given time.’ (Statement in the first issue of the Institute’s journal Konjunktura Gospodarcza quoted in Toporowski, 2013, p. 31). The founding statement cited, among others, the Koniuńktarny Instituta Moskva as providing the kind of analysis that would be provided by the Warsaw Institute.