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The sustainability of national economies is measured using green net national product (GNNP) adjustments to aggregate income, investment or wealth data. The practical and philosophical rationale for testing sustainability in a present-value-maximizing development path is discussed.

Marxists and Leninists have adopted varying positions regarding the centralization of economic and political institutions. Marxists such as Karl Kautsky and Otto Bauer advanced the view that ownership should be taken away from the state and distributed among trade unions, cooperatives and local governments. On the other hand, Leninists proposed the creation of centralized governments that would handle political and economic planning decisions.

Rolling planning entails the continual revision of dynamic programs where the finite horizon N found ahead at the time of each revision remains constant. The rolling plan is perceived as a realization of an evolutionary mechanism of intertemporal decentralization since the decisions made about resource allocation are carried out without verification by future agents. The possibility of designing an evolutionary mechanism is established for a multi-sector Ramsey model.

The restrictions imposed on a new explanation of the causes of storming behavior based on the game-theoretic modelling can be rejected if the common knowledge assumption is properly applied. The restrictions were imposed to avoid the existence of multiple Nash equilibria in the game. Storming pertains to the production of a substantial amount of the monthly output target in the last few days of the month.

A study estimating the growth of agricultural production efficiency between 1965 to 1989 for nine centrally planned economies was conducted. The nine economies were that of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and China. Research indicates that production efficiency improved from 1978 to 1989. Slowdown of growth during the 1980s was due to the slower growth of inputs.

The production results of a Soviet centrally planned economy are evaluated and analyzed. Comparisons of plan fulfillment between heavy industries and consumer goods industries reveal that planning priorities are not reflected in its fulfillment. Soviet planning priorities were formerly assumed to be expressed in the observable fulfillment for a certain period. This may be true only for fuels, electric power, and non-food consumer goods.

The increasing centralization of national economies has created crisis conditions for growing numbers of local economies. Efforts to deal with the problem have so far been largely unsuccessful. Now, unless the internationalization of economic activity is guided by the principles of democracy and economic efficiency, it will lead to even more centralization. In the EC, for example, this will worsen the difficulties of 'crisis regions.' A key cause of the problem is the assumption that macroeconomic control can be exercised at a single level only. The solution depends on developing a multilevel system of macroeconomic management,at subnational and supranational levels as well as the national level. A twin-track approach, localizing and internationalizing, is needed to make localeconomic well-being a goal of economic policy, and to help create a more environmentally sustainable world economy. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

The emergence of a new problematique - transitional economies - that cannot be handled within traditional paradigms and models is linked to the difficult transformation of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to a Western-style market economy. The case of the former East Germany stands out, for here the transformation is occurring at unprecedented speed and in the most condensed form. Several phases of such transformation can be envisaged: introduction of basic principles of the market economy, building of infrastructural, financial, administrative and legal preconditions for the efficient running of scale economies, and bringing about the shift to socially oriented and ecologically sustainable economic performance. The transformation needs help from the West. Coordinated and strategically directed assistance to self-help is required that may take the form of recovery programme for Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (a new version of the Marshall Plan). (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Spagat, Michael -- Contract Enforcement in Sellers' Markets I present an infinitely repeated game model where a monopolist seller has a contractual obligation with several buyers in each period. If a contract is violated the buyer can collect some compensation and impose a penalty on the seller. There are an infinite number of subgame perfect equilibria in this model, but I employ the concept of e-validated equilibrium to pick out a unique equilibrium outcome for the game where the seller is able to dominate the buyers. This model is clearly applicable to supply problems of Soviet-type economies, but it can explain certain phenomena of Western economies as well. J. Comp. Econom., December 1991, 15(4), pp. 681-697. Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912.

This comment reconsiders the comparison of E. Malinvaud's (in E. Malinvaud and M. O. L. Bacharach, Eds., Activity Analysis in the Theory of Growth and Planning, pp. 170-208. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967) and P. Chander's (Econometrica 46,4:761-777, July 1978) iterative planning procedures recently presented by S. J. Clark (J. Comp. Econom. 13, 1:61-84, Mar. 1989). It demonstrates clearly the effect that increasing the number of produced goods has on the costs of these procedures. It considers explicitly the setup costs of putting in place the institutional requirements of these procedures. It also shows that Chander's procedure can be suitably modified so as to have a positive interpretation as well, in that it can be claimed to correspond to the competitive price adjustment process.

A study was conducted to analyze a principal-agent framework supporting a multiple penalty mechanism with monetary and resource-based penalties. The model was examined in two institutional settings, namely, a market economy and a centrally planned economy. Results indicated that the model promotes testable assumptions concerning differences in optimal penalty imposition between the two economic system.

No empirical evidence exists to support the common knowledge assumption, despite its plausibility. It is suggested that the proper utilization of this common knowledge assumption will make it possible to dispose of the restrictions imposed on a new and original explanation of the causes of storming behavior based on the game-theoretic modeling. There may be substantial evidence that the quality of output deteriorates during storming, but it has yet to be established whether enterprises in a planned economy are willing to accept inferior quality supplies at the onset of the planning period.