Why did the socialist system that dominated Eastern European countries for much of the 20th century collapse around 1990? Drawing on the newly released wiiw COMECON Dataset and reports that the wiiw was publishing at that time, we explore whether the collapse was due to unfixable systemic flaws...

This paper revisits the external economic relations in the former command economies of Central, East and Southeast Europe (CESEE) by exploring historical trade data. It provides a descriptive analysis of foreign trade statistics, drawing on the newly introduced wiiw COMECON Dataset, which...

Part 1: Microeconomic Environment -- Chapter 1: The Roles and Responsibilities of Local Government -- Chapter 2: Finance, Taxation and Government Behavior -- Chapter 3: Government Investment, Financing and Debt -- Chapter 4: Government and Industrialization -- Part 2: Macroeconomic Consequences...

We adopt a comparative view of the stabilization policies designed and implemented in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia during the fatal economic crises of their regimes in late 1980s. The role of the IMF can be better highlighted by comparing “with (Yugoslavia)-without (Bulgaria)” scenarios in a...

Das Thema dieses Buches ist die Wechselwirkung zwischen der Wirtschaftsordnung und der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung in den unterschiedlichen Wirtschaftssystemen Deutschlands seit 1945, der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft der alten Bundesrepublik Deutschland, der Staatssozialistischen Planwirtschaft der...

This empirical study stresses the underlying macroeconomic forces which determine foreign trade flows in CPEs. The general specification includes a planners' demand equation for the volume of imports, a planners' supply equation for the volume of exports, and a rest-of-world demand equation for...

Innovationsblockaden und -leistungen ausgewählter Betriebe der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik und der Volksrepublik Polen stehen im Mittelpunkt der Arbeit. Außerdem werden Branchen, Kombinate und gesamtstaatliche Institutionen in den Blick genommen. Die Arbeit zeigt, dass in der DDR ein...

Der spätere Nobelpreisträger Friedrich A. von Hayek publizierte kurz vor dem D-Day des Jahres 1944 sein analytisches Meisterstück The Road to Serfdom. Er präsentierte damit eine präzise Beschreibung der wesentlichen gesellschaftspolitischen Ursachen, die zu der nationalsozialistischen...

Socialism is popular in the UK – not just among students, but also among people in their 30s and 40s. This is confirmed by survey after survey. Surveys also show that support for socialism in general terms is matched by support for a broad range of individual policies that could reasonably be...

The paper considers issues in recent research on macroeconomic equilibrium in centrally planned economies. I defend the explicit aggregative , macroeconomic approach in theory, institutional relationships and measurement. It has offered a fresh, coherent framework for analysis of many CPE...

We analyze consequences of changing the terms of trade between agriculture and industry on capital accumulation and on welfare of workers in different sectors. The issue was central to Soviet industrialization debate and it remains important in today's developing world. Through a simple general...

Bureaucratically organized systems tend to be less efficient than economies in which agents are free to choose their output targets, as well as the means to meet them. This paper presents a simple model of planner-manager interactions and shows how bureaucratic economies can end up in a...

The paper serves as an introduction to the RuJE special issue on the circulation of economic ideas between Russia and the West. This circulation is a contentious issue, especially among Russian economists. In this article a specific pattern of West-Russia-West transfer is investigated. The...

Economic growth in centrally planned economies was declining with the duration of these economic systems. There were multiple reasons for this development. Deeper insight can be provided by dividing economic growth into extensive and intensive parts. The goal of this article is to estimate the...

The article aims to verify whether, in the 1980s, there was a significant decrease in the involvement of the regional communist party structures in charge of economic affairs in Poland. The analysis is made on the case of the Warsaw Committee (KW) of the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP)....

Conventional wisdom suggests that the stocks of human capital were one of the few positive legacies from communism. However, if factories under communism were so inefficient, why would the education system not have been? Using the education production function approach and new data on...

Under communism, workers had their wages set according to a centrally-determined wage grid. In this paper we use new micro data on men to estimate returns to human capital under the communist wage grid and during the transition to a market economy. We use data from the Czech Republic because it...

"Bernie Sanders' socialist advocacy in the United States, communist China's economic successes and a Marxist revival are inspiring many to muse about improved strategies for building superior socialist futures. Socialist Economic Systems provides an objective record of socialism's promises and...

Preface: The Terrible Twelve: Core Tasks for Socialist and Capitalist Enterprises.-Introduction: Hungary as Site and Process: Geography, History, and Society to 1945 -- Chapter 1: Postwar Reconstruction and Forced Industrialization, 1946-56 -- Chapter 2: Socializing Agriculture, 1957-66 --...

1. The degree of monopoly in the Kaldor-Mirrlees growth model -- 2. Capitalism, socialism and steady growth -- 3. Introductory essay to V. K. Dmitriev -- 4. Michal Kalecki's contributions to the theory and practice of socialist planning -- 5. Kalecki and Keynes revisited -- 6. Socialism on earth...

Chapter 1. Socialism Collapsed Regardless Of How Long The Progressive Society “Built” It! -- Chapter 2. Marxist Perspective on the Capitalist Economy -- Chapter 3. Capitalism’s Contradictions and Reasons of Its Collapse -- Chapter 4. Theoretical Socialism or the First Phase of Communism --...

Belarus was among the few post-communist countries to resign from comprehensive market reforms and attempt to improve the efficiency of the economy through administrative means, leaving market mechanisms only an auxiliary role. Since its inception, the ‘Belarusian economic model’ has...

Since the economic calculation debate of the 1920-30s, it is known that it is impossible to create a coherent balanced plan that equates supply and demand of millions of goods and services in the national economy, not to speak about the optimal plan. It is not well understood, though, how the...

Belarus was among the few post-communist countries to resign from comprehensive market reforms and attempt to improve the efficiency of the economy through administrative means, leaving market mechanisms only an auxiliary role. Since its inception, the 'Belarusian economic model' has undergone...

Can language be centrally planned and controlled? Friedrich Hayek considered language the archetypal example of spontaneous order, yet many countries adopt a planned order approach to language, attempting to centrally plan and control it through language academies. I collect original data on the...

The paper deals with the discussion on the possible models of economy - market economy, which is usually associated with capitalism, and planned economy, which is usually associated with socialism. The experience of the 20th century has shown that efforts to choose the model of socialism have...