Economics textbook presenting a formal description and economic analysis of the centrally planned economy of the type of the USSR economic system - provides a representative survey of the main applications and techniques of national planning pertinent to the centralization type of planning and economic modelling, etc. Flow charts, graphs, references and statistical tables.

3 edge, methods and theory. I turn now to some of my own reflections on this score. Some Reflections My first proposition is that if we are interested in analyzing the performance and dynamic properties of the world's economies, it is only at significant peril that comparative economists can overlook noneconomic or "political" factors. This is not to say that it is illegitimate to abstract from non-economic factors for particular purposes; rather, such abstraction should occur only with cogni zance of the influences being suppressed. I have argued elsewhere that the analytical compromise in suppressing noneconomic variables is greater for the study of planned than for market economies. [7] Borrowing from Polanyi [8], it is claimed that in market sys tems the economic sphere is disembedded from (separate and not subordinate to) the political, social and cultural spheres, while in planned systems the economic sphere is embedded in the noneconomic spheres. To be sure, market economies are strongly affected by political and cultural factors, but planned economies have and often exercise the potential to let political goals dominate in making production, allocational, or distributional choices. Indeed, it is difficult in practice to separate out what are political and what are economic decisions in planned systems.

First published in 1987, Incentives and Economic Systems is a selection of papers presented at the Eighth Arne Ryde Symposium at Frostavallen, Sweden on how institutions attempt to guide individual behaviour by manipulating the social and economic incentive system. These economic and social aspects of incentives determine ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ behaviour by individuals and organizations across various economic systems. The essays in the volume deal with various aspects of the incentive problems and the various manifestations of such problems, along with moral and ethical issues. The essays will be an enlightening read for students of economics, policymaking and international politics.

The economic system of the Soviet Union is of vital interest not merely because the USSR is a world superpower but also because the Soviets offer their economic development strategy and system as a model to Third World nations seeking rapid development and social change. This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the evolution and operation of the Soviet economy, its external economic relations, and the challenges it faces in the next decade. The selections describe the nature and difficulties of Soviet economic planning and the wide range of legal and illegal unplanned activities in the Soviet economy today. They examine also the involvement of citizens as both producers and consumers. The closing section looks at prospects for the future in the areas of agriculture, energy, and technological development.

Examines the nature and the mode of operation of the centrally planned economy, assessing its strengths and the weaknesses that eventually led to its demise.

This book examines the history of reforms and major state interventions affecting Russian agriculture: the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the Stolypin reforms, the NEP, the Collectivization, Khrushchev reforms, and finally farm enterprise privatization in the early 1990s. It shows a pattern emerging from a political imperative in imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet regimes, and it describes how these reforms were justified in the name of the national interest during severe crises - rapid inflation, military defeat, mass strikes, rural unrest, and/or political turmoil. It looks at the consequences of adversity in the economic environment for rural behavior after reform and at long-run trends. It has chapters on property rights, rural organization, and technological change. It provides a new database for measuring agricultural productivity from 1861 to 1913 and updates these estimates to the present. This book is a study of the policies aimed at reorganizing rural production and their effectiveness in transforming institutions.

"Each of the chapters was presented at a conference in the spring of 1995, sponsored by Duquesne University and George Mason University"--Pref.

This volume is a comprehensive collection of critical essays on The Taming of the Shrew, and includes extensive discussions of the play's various printed versions and its theatrical productions. Aspinall has included only those essays that offer the most influential and controversial arguments surrounding the play. The issues discussed include gender, authority, female autonomy and unruliness, courtship and marriage, language and speech, and performance and theatricality.