Abstract

Capital and Management in Socialist Economies

The idea, that an economy can be operated by methods of central planning to realize the economic optimum like the model of a private business corporation, proved to be successful only in the first periods of (“extensive”) industrialization. Growing product differentiation increased the danger of disallocation of resources. The solution of microeconomic allocation problems turned out to be most unsatisfactory. Since 1962, reforms try to decentralize decision making in the individual enterprise striving mostly for production aims planned centrally. The problem of appropriate investment and success criteria for the system’s management remains unsolved. While in sectors of the economy, where large sums of capital are needed, ex ante central planning is necessary, the problem is different in manufacturing industry. Here, an efficient selection from the abundance of continually and acceleratingly renewing technical progress can be made only with decentralized rules of efficiency, which, however, must be based on market prices. But the choice of a soviet director is limited by problems of financing and supply. He may calculate approximately the technical effect of investment, but he cannot evaluate its economic effect, since prices have been set since long and do not reflect the permanently changing relations of scarcity of resources, Besides, the certain profit from selling established products is frequently preferred to the risk of innovation. The industrial reform of 1965 has focused on the relation of the profit from sold production and the invested capital stock. It emphasizes the importance of investment financing from enterprize profits and credit (in contrast to the usual allotment of means for investment by central authorities). A greater flexibility in fulfilling the plan can be observed, but management’s investment choices are still very limited. The centrally planned supply of investment cannot keep pace with increased decentralized investment demands. The reason for the stated inferiority of socialist economies in realizing technical progress is ultimately the absence of a capital market. Its role for most investment decisions can be substituted only most imperfectly by central planning.