1. DISCUSSION.
- Author
-
Campbell, Robert and Granick, David
- Subjects
CENTRAL economic planning ,PRICING ,PRICES ,SOVIET economy ,INDUSTRIES - Abstract
This article presents a discussion on the research paper "Soviet Economic Planning," by Gregory Grossman, a professor at the University of California in Berkeley, California, published in the May 1959 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." Grossman's paper establishes a very stimulating framework for the consideration of Soviet industrial prices. However, the class of quasi-prices is an extremely large one and one should be aware that in stretching the price system to include it, "price system" has been subtly redefined to cover nearly the whole mechanism of guidance and discipline in the Soviet system and it is a mechanism that has little in common with what, price system usually means. Not that there is any objection to this, Grossman has shown well enough that there is little point in studying in the Soviet economy what is usually meant by price system. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that while price systems are consciously employed by Soviet planners as an important determinant of enterprise behavior, they constitute a clumsy class of prices in practice. The reader of Soviet planning literature finds frequent instances of quasi-prices that prompt gross irrationalities and instances where the introduction of new quasi-prices to eliminate old irrationalities simply breeds new ones.
- Published
- 1959