The Logic of the Planned Economy

The Logic of the Planned Economy
Author: Pawel H. Dembinski
Publisher:
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1991
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This timely book examines and seeks to explain the inner contradictions of centrally planned economies and shows how the seeds of their collapse had existed within the system from the very start. The author shows how the orthodox ideological principles of the system rendered it inflexible and incapable of reform and thus unable to transform itself into an efficient modern economy. Though the system as such has ceased to exist, it is as yet only the rules that have disappeared--the system's components continue to exist and, the author argues, a proper understanding of the origins and previous functions of each component is necessary if it is to be integrated into the new system.

Quantity Planning and Price Planning in the Soviet Union

Quantity Planning and Price Planning in the Soviet Union
Author: Hans Hirsch
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2016-11-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1512802506

Karl Scholz's translation of the study Mengenplanung und Preisplanung in der Sovijunion by Hans Hirsch reproduces the provocative thesis of the author in concise, lucid English. The need for such a book is made dear in Hans Hirsch's introduction: "The question of economic accounting under socialism has attracted much interest for a long time. This is primarily due to its key position in the controversy over the economic order. However, if understood correctly, it is just as important to pure economic theory. Here lies the best opportunity first to examine price theory statements and to perceive how far price theory has either general validity or is merely applicable to particular historical phenomena and, secondly, to separate out the items that are not determined by the logic of the theoretical system but by the incidental peculiarities of the empirical economy to which the theory is related. Hans Hirsch's treatise deals with the Soviet experience and difficulties. The treatise also shows the methods of economic guidance employed in Russia by considering the following significant theoretical economic series of topics: the principles determine quantities of product and the direction of their use; the distribution of authority and influence between higher and lower guiding agencies; the role of prices in the guiding process; and finally the operating forces and viewpoints, in setting prices. In the presentation the conflict between the system of material planning, which forms the basis, and the effects of the financial means of guidance, especially of prices, becomes clearly visible. This gives occasion to attempt a theoretical interpretation of the material guidance system, as such, and in its relationship to a financial guidance system. In so doing the author expresses views as to the basic compatibility of material and financial guidance methods, contrary to hitherto prevailing doctrine. The knowledge thus acquired will serve as renewed stimulus to further development of the theory of economic planning.

The Distorted Economy

The Distorted Economy
Author: H. Blomqvist
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2002-10-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1403914346

An economy does not always work according to idealized textbook models. Frequently, economic systems are subject to wide-ranging distortions and require remedy via subsidy and taxes to restore their social optimum. In The Distorted Economy, Hans C. Blomqvist and Mats Lundahl describe how to tackle the various distortions on goods and factor markets and apply their analytic framework to several case studies such as the trade policy of developing countries, apartheid in South Africa and socialist planned economies. The authors offer an important and timely analysis of the cause, effect and resolution of distortions in the economy.

Growing Out of the Plan

Growing Out of the Plan
Author: Barry Naughton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 398
Release: 1995
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521574624

This is a comprehensive study of China's economic reforms, from their beginnings at the end of 1978 through the completion of many of the initial reform measures during 1993. The features of Chinese reform that differ from the former USSR are highlighted.

How China Escaped Shock Therapy

How China Escaped Shock Therapy
Author: Isabella M. Weber
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-05-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 042995395X

China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country’s rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the fierce contest about economic reforms that shaped China’s path. In the first post-Mao decade, China’s reformers were sharply divided. They agreed that China had to reform its economic system and move toward more marketization—but struggled over how to go about it. Should China destroy the core of the socialist system through shock therapy, or should it use the institutions of the planned economy as market creators? With hindsight, the historical record proves the high stakes behind the question: China embarked on an economic expansion commonly described as unprecedented in scope and pace, whereas Russia’s economy collapsed under shock therapy. Based on extensive research, including interviews with key Chinese and international participants and World Bank officials as well as insights gleaned from unpublished documents, the book charts the debate that ultimately enabled China to follow a path to gradual reindustrialization. Beyond shedding light on the crossroads of the 1980s, it reveals the intellectual foundations of state-market relations in reform-era China through a longue durée lens. Overall, the book delivers an original perspective on China’s economic model and its continuing contestations from within and from without.

The People's Republic of Walmart

The People's Republic of Walmart
Author: Leigh Phillips
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 178663516X

Are multi-national corporations like Walmart and Amazon laying the groundwork for international socialism? For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us? An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People’s Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.

The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China

The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China
Author: Susan L. Shirk
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2023-04-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520912217

In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chinese communist political institutions are more flexible and less centralized than their Soviet counterparts were. Shirk pioneers a rational choice institutional approach to analyze policy-making in a non-democratic authoritarian country and to explain the history of Chinese market reforms from 1979 to the present. Drawing on extensive interviews with high-level Chinese officials, she pieces together detailed histories of economic reform policy decisions and shows how the political logic of Chinese communist institutions shaped those decisions. Combining theoretical ambition with the flavor of on-the-ground policy-making in Beijing, this book is a major contribution to the study of reform in China and other communist countries. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994. In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chine

National Economic Planning

National Economic Planning
Author: Don Lavoie
Publisher: Cato Institute
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1985-06-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 193718420X

Don Lavoie argues that the radical Left's enthusiasm for planning has been a tragic mistake and that progressive social change requires the abandonment of this traditional view. Lavoie argues that planning—whether Marxism, economic democracy, or industrial policy—can only disrupt social and economic coordination. He challenges both radicals and their critics to begin reformulating our whole notion of progressive economic change without reliance on central planning. National Economic Planning: What is Left? will challenge thinkers and policymakers of every political persuasion.

China’s Plan for Economic and Social Development

China’s Plan for Economic and Social Development
Author: Jun Yin
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2022-10-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9811959048

This book reviews the basic process of China’s fourteen five-year plans with systematic theoretical overview and rich historical data and moves on to discuss the theoretical logic of plan-based state governance. The authors hold that the five-year planning system with Chinese characteristics is a flexible planning system; through adaptive macro-planning and incentive target governance, it mobilizes government, market and social forces to work together to fulfill national objectives and is a representative mechanism of the state governance system and a symbol of modernized state governance capacity. From an academic point of view, it theoretically answers questions about what, why and how concerning the five-year plans. From an interdisciplinary perspective, it explores the theoretical logic and experience of plan-based governance by combining Marxism, western theories, and the science of history. Also, it tries to represent historical facts based on a vast literature about the history of CPC and PRC, reviews historical details of the previous thirteen five-year plans, and describes the great journey of the plan preparation and implementation under the CPC leadership. This book has been published in Simplified Chinese (Peking University Press) and Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong Open Page Press). It has won the 2021 Annual Books of China Economics Education and Research Network, the first prize of excellent Works of the First Young Marxism Prize, 100 "Red Classic Reading" recommended reading books of Jiangsu National Reading Activity Leading Group celebrating the Centennial of the Founding of the Party, and Jintai Good Books of People's Daily Library.