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The centrally planned economies (CPEs) of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have experienced severe imbalances in domestic and external markets over the past several decades. As a result, they have been chronically afflicted by problems such as excess demand, repressed inflation, deficits of commodities, queues, waiting lists, and forced savings. Economists have responded to these phenomena by developing appropriate theoretical and empirical models of CPEs. Of particular note have been the pioneering studies of Richard Portes on disequilibrium econometric models and Janos Kornai on the shortage economy. Each approach has attracted followers who have produced numerous, innovative macro- and microeconomic models of Poland, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, and the USSR. These models have proved to be of considerable value in the analysis of the causes, consequences and remedies of disequilibrium phenomena. Inevitably, the new research has also generated controversies both between and within the schools of shortage and disequilibrium modelling, concerning the fundamental nature of the socialist economy, theoretical concepts and definitions, the specification of models, estimation techniques, interpretation of empirical findings, and policy recommend ations. Furthermore, the research effort has been energetic but incomplete, so many gaps exist in the field.
List of contents
One The foundations of disequilibrium and shortage models of centrally planned economies.- 1 Introduction to models of disequilibrium and shortage in centrally planned economies.- 2 The theory and measurement of macroeconomic disequilibrium in centrally planned economies.- 3 The economics of shortage in the centrally planned economies.- 4 The chronic excess demand hypothesis.- 5 Hidden and repressed inflation in Soviet-type economies: definitions, measurements and stabilization.- 6 Disequilibrium econometrics for centrally planned economies.- Two Macroeconomic disequilibrium models of centrally planned economies.- 7 Disequilibrium models of the Czechoslovak economy.- 8 Macroeconomic disequilibrium models of Poland.- 9 Macroeconomic disequilibrium models of Hungary.- Three Sectoral shortage and disequilibrium models of centrally planned economies.- 10 Sectoral shortage models in Hungary.- 11 Disequilibrium modelling of consumption in the centrally planned economy.- 12 Savings and consumption in the centrally planned economy: a disequilibrium approach.- 13 A disequilibrium approach to modelling foreign trade in centrally planned economies.- 14 Disequilibrium models of investment.- 15 Reproduction of shortage in the Hungarian car market.- 16 Modelling parallel markets in centrally planned economies: the case of the automobile market in Poland.- 17 Priority and the shortage model: the medical system in the sociaUst economy.- 18 Conclusions and future prospects.
