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Presents information related to several abstracts on economics published in the February 1962 issue of the journal 'Oxford Economic Papers.' Examination of India's third five year plan; Marginal rate of saving in the Indian economy; Indian balance of payments policy and exchange auctions.

There were many economic reforms initiated in the Soviet Union in the mid 1960s in an attempt to recentralize the planning system. The reforms initiated in 1965 failed to achieve their purpose, and the latest five-year plan represents a recentralization of planning and a return to several features of the incentive system that had existed prior to 1965. This paper analyzes these recent developments in the incentive system in Soviet industry. One of the important changes initiated in 1965 was an increased emphasis on profit as a source of employee bonuses. It was expected that giving greater scope for managers' initiative and providing more attractive incentives for both managers and workers would stimulate labor productivity. The size of this incentive fund was planned to be a varying percentage of the wage bill in each enterprise, depending on two success indicators that Soviet economists usually termed fundcreating indicators. It is remarked in the article that the significance of these changes, lies in their direction.

Early industrial development in Soviet Union means its development during the period of the first two Five Year Plans-is commonly acknowledged to have been extremely rapid by international standards. As such, it inevitably exerts a strong attraction on the governments of underdeveloped nations. There is a natural interest in seeing what lessons can be learned from it. This paper concentrates on one such lesson. In trying to explain this rapid rate of development, three different lines of explanation have been pushed by various Western scholars. The main explanation given is the high proportion of national income set aside for investment, and the fact that such investment was directed primarily into the expansion of directly-productive rather than social capital. This investment was accompanied by a large influx of labor into industry and construction, since this labor force was more pushed out of agriculture than pulled into industry, such relocation of human resources did not interfere with a program of restricting consumption to the advantage of investment.

The article discusses that one of the principal objectives of the Malaysian Five-Year Plan, 1966-70 is to "lay the groundwork for less rapid population growth by instituting an effective programme of family planning." In consonance with this policy the Malaysian Government established an autonomous National Family Planning Board on June 10, 1966, under the Family Planning Act of 1966 passed by parliament. The planning and execution of the KAP Survey lasted about one full year from mid-1966 to mid-1967, while the fieldwork was held in two rounds. Very minor variation in the proportion reporting some acquaintance with birth control methods prevails with age and parity. The proportion increases gently with age up to the maximum at the 25-34 age group and then falls slightly toward the end of the reproductive age range. Since the poorer wives are most probably also very poorly educated, there is a positive correlation between income and knowledge of contraceptive method. The data tabulated by household income of wives shown confirm that the relationship not only existed but was rather strong.

A reprint of the article "Is Stalin Weakening or the Soviets?" by Leon Trotsky, which appeared in the July 1932 issue, is presented. Topics include the opposition to purported Trotskyism in the Soviet Union by political leader Joseph Stalin, the control of Stalin over the Soviet Politbureau, and disagreements regarding Soviet economic policy regarding industrialization and collectivization in the context of a five year plan.

The article reports upon a dynamic extension of the macro-model originally constructed as a consistency check upon the Second Five-Year Plan of Turkey. Authors of the article addresses plan formulation, a task that is comparatively free of ideological elements. Authors do not attempt a diagnosis of the existing structure of the Turkish economy, nor does they spell out the policy instruments needed in order to steer the economy along the planned future trajectories. Given the information base accumulated for the original consistency model, the dynamic extension turned out to be comparatively easy. No new data were collected and only minor modifications were made in technological norms. No more than a few man-mouths were needed in order to convert the original five-sector, inter-industry system into a model which could in turn be used to identify, areas where it would be fruitful to disaggregate further and to accumulate additional data. The ease of conversion is at least partially attributable to the formulation in terms of a "gradualist" consumption path.

The article highlights that during the first five-year plan period from 1953-57, Chinese Communist policymakers pursued the Soviet Union strategy as practiced by general secretary of the communist party Joseph Stalin for economic development with local adaptations. However, given the vastly different factor endowments of Mainland China in the fifties as compared to the Soviet Union of the twenties, Chinese planners were forced to modify significantly their original approach. They thus evolved a new strategy for the second five-year plan from 1958-62, based on intensive utilization of underemployed labor combined with promotion of technological dualism, as a means of maximizing the rate of economic growth. The new model comprised of communes that extended to incorporate the notion of rapid development of a national economy. According to this concept, the state would concentrate the preponderant bulk of its investment resources on the development of the modern sector. This is a sector with a high reinvestment quotient, with practically all of this reinvestment to be channeled into continuing growth of itself. At the same time, the diversion of output from the modern to the rural sector is to be minimized. Therefore, the expansion of the rural sector was to be made a function of its own output and investment.

During years of World War II, Soviet economists, like their colleagues in the U.S. and Great Britain, concentrated the great bulk of their energies upon problems connected with different aspects of the war effort. This activity encompassed not only all aspects of the internal economy of the U.S.S.R., but was also directed at understanding developments in economies of all major foreign nations, with some particular stress in the last two years upon efforts being made to secure international cooperation in various economic fields such as finance, trade, agriculture and labor. During the past two years, Soviet economists concentrating upon problems of the internal development of the U.S.S.R. have been engaged primarily in planning the restoration of devastated areas in the U.S.S.R. and charting the future economic development of their country. Much of this work has been done by personnel of Gosplan and the Institut Ekonomiki, as well as by economics attached to various other governmental organs. The most important results of this activity were embodied in the Fourth Five Year Plan adopted by the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. in March, 1946. Considerable research and planning have apparently also been done on the longer range economic development of the U.S.S.R.

The article focuses on the family planning program in Korea. The Korean family planning program has often been cited as the world's leading success in fertility control. In a 48-month period it recruited over one-third of all married couples of child-bearing age in the country. It has consistently set high goals and met them; it maintains a large and well-dispersed force of workers; it embraces a strong private arm; and it has produced evidence of a definite fertility decline. The presentation gives a general description of the Korean program--which may be passed over by those already familiar with it--surveys its main accomplishments, and goes on to identify the principal features of "family planning" in the Korean case. Equal attention is given to approaches used and not used both to clarify just how the Korean achievements have come about and to show that the potential of family planning, i.e. of the administrative structures already operating, is as yet undemonstrated. The program and its goals are written into, and are basic to, the Five-Year Plans. Over 10 years starting in January, 1962, population growth is to be reduced from about 3 percent to 2 percent by the end of 1971.

This article focuses on applied marxism in Soviet Union. The fact that Marxian genetic principles serve as the basis for Soviet Russian policy is increasingly evident. It is the purpose of this article to exhibit the use of these principles by Vladimir I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, political leaders of Soviet Union, in adopting policies looking toward the foundation of a classless Socialist State in the U.S.S.R. It will be shown that the principal function of the economic policies adopted and applied during each of two periods--that of the New Economic Policy from 1920-1921 to 1927-1928; and that of the Piatiletkas from 1928-1929 to date-has not been to plan the Russian economy or to increase the national income. Rather, it has been to supply a technological basis for the cultivation of collectivistic forms of behavior. In the industrial sections of the country this meant the rebuilding and extension of the machine technique. In the agricultural sections it meant the undertaking of a great experiment in mechanization. The Marxian theories implicit in this program are, chiefly, three. The law of the concentration of capital points to the need not only of a complex, interdependent machine technique, but also, therewith, of a subordination of labor in the productive process.

Expansion in membership and marked changes in the scope of their activity have characterized the development of trade unions in Soviet Union. It has become evident that their role in a centrally managed national economy has required the surrender of their earlier claims to control over production. State organs have taken from them the determination of wage rates and have instituted schemes for increasing production and reducing labor turnover which the trade unions are forced to carry out. The trade unions' freedom to negotiate the basic conditions of pay has disappeared with the increase of wage regulation by the state organs. The state-employer has the upper hand and is able to determine wage and production programs. The Soviet government's determination to reduce labor turnover as one of the obstacles to the speedy realization of the Five-Year plan has resulted in a number of regulations which put unusual restrictions upon the workers' freedom of movement. The trade unions have retained little responsibility for labor protection or social insurance. This change has been endorsed by the labor press which, instead of defending the standards of the Labor Code, has argued for setting them aside in the interest of production.

The article focuses on the stagnation of Indian exports during 1951 to 1971. The foreign exchange problems of many of the underdeveloped countries have attracted attention to their relatively stagnant export earnings. Some observers feel this stagnation is mainly the result of slowly expanding world markets for these countries' traditional exports, which are mainly primary products. Other analysts argue that a relatively inelastic supply of exports, as a result of slowly expanding domestic output and rapidly expanding domestic demand has been an important and perhaps the primary, cause for the export stagnation. An examination of India's export performance over the last decade is of interest both as a test of these two alternative hypotheses and because of India's general importance. India was third only to Venezuela and Brazil in 1961 as an exporter among the underdeveloped countries and India's export earnings during her Second Five Year Plan were only 2 per cent greater than her export earnings during her First Five Year Plan.

The article presents information on India's development policies. The First Five Year Plan placed the emphasis on agriculture. The Second Plan, which came into effect in April 1956, seeks to promote an expansion of small-scale village industries for the production of consumer goods. At the same time it calls for a big increase in steel production and engineering capacity. Concern with the problem of unemployment is paramount in current Indian thinking. Professor P. C. Mahalanobis, one of the chief planners, regards this as the most pressing problem. This emphasis may seem surprising, perhaps even incomprehensible, to some economists outside India. What are the facts? There is first a certain amount of open unemployment, mostly in urban centers, which is said to have increased in the years 1952-55 and is estimated at somewhere between five and ten million persons. India has rightly been proud of her success in expanding production since 1951 without any price inflation, at any rate up to the end of 1955. In fact, the general level of prices showed a slightly downward tendency during that period, despite a considerable increase in the money supply. This was possible not only because of the increase in crop yields and production generally, but also because of the progressive extension of the monetary sector of the economy.

The article discusses the functioning of Soviet planning with especial focus on the Fourth Five-Year Plan (FYP). If by a plan is meant a well integrated combination of goals for all, or at least all major, economic sectors and factors, the Law on the Five-Year Plan of Restoration and Development of the National Economy of the USSR in 1946-50, hereafter referred to as the Fourth FYP Law, was not a real plan. It was actually an incomplete collection of poorly integrated or entirely unintegrated plans for individual sectors of the Soviet economy. The fragmentary nature and lack of proper tie-ins of the fourth FYP may have been due to insufficient time for its preparation. But the fourth FYP may also have been a step away from the comprehensive, fully tied-in long-range plan which was believed necessary at the inauguration of the FYP's. A subtle implement like good planning is incompatible with dictatorship, with its secrecy, its prosecution of free thought, its encouragement of parrot faculties and other accessories of Soviet "democracy."

The article discusses issues related to the national income and product of the Soviet Union in 1937. It attempts to accomplish two related tasks. The first is to set up for the Soviet Union a series of national economic accounts and second task involves a methodological question on which national income literature does not seem entirely clear but for which it may be permissible momentarily to assume a common understanding. These two tasks, needless to say, add up to a sizeable project, and it is restricted to one particular year of 1937. In general 1937 was a prosperous year by Soviet standards. The Second Five Year Plan, which ended in that year, had met with very real success in every sphere; not only in heavy industries, which of course had first priority, but also in agriculture and consumers goods industries. The expansion of heavy industries continued after 1937, but consumer prosperity was brought to a close when after Munich the Russians shifted their defense preparations into high-gear. As of 1937, the collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union had been practically completed.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the pattern of industrial expansion in the major Indian manufacturing regions and to describe changes in the locational pattern of six principal industries during 1950s. The study involves a comparison, on a distinct basis, of the number of persons employed in manufacturing in 1950 with the persons employed in 1960. The year 1950 preceded the launching of India's first Five Year Plan of economic development and 1960 is the latest year for which industrial employment data are available.

The Congress Party of India is noted for the strong ideological position of its pre and post-independence leadership and for its adoption of the goal of building a "socialist pattern of society." Many of the spokesmen for the party have maintained that this goal best fits the philosophical foundations of Hinduism. This article considers some of the ideological background of planning, some of the alleged peculiarities of Hinduism, and some of the implications of development policies in the second and third five-year plans. In order to maximize growth in India, development plans would have to be devoted to the encouragement of the growth of the maximum number of entrepreneurs, to the building of a viable market system, to providing adequate relative price incentives for farmers and to teaching them to react to them, to encouraging private capital formation wherever feasible, and to confining government investment largely to those infrastructure items which facilitate development and growth. Such an approach to planning would be pragmatic rather than doctrinaire, practical rather than ideological, and would utilize the latent entrepreneurial energy in developing a growing, mixed, dynamic system. There are those who claim to see such a pattern still as an emerging possibility in India, but to assess its reality is impossible at this time.