An Economic System And Its Elements

An economic system is a set of interrelated elements that make up a common economic structure. It is common to distinguish 4 types of economic structures: traditional economy, command economy, market economy and mixed economy. The following article discusses all the four types of an economic system.

Central Asia in the Soviet Command Economy

The five republics of Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—spent the majority of the 20th century as part of the USSR and the Soviet command economy. Over this period, their economies grew significantly, as did the standard of living enjoyed by their populations. At the same time, the Soviet command economy, along with its particular application in Central Asia, created both significant barriers and long-term economic damage in the region. Local salaries and access to goods remained far below the Soviet average; agricultural production took precedence over industrialization and modernization; the combination of expansionist planning and resource extraction meant that over decades little was done to change the system even as ecological disaster loomed. When the Soviet command economy receded in 1991, it left an ambiguous detritus, one remembered as violently forced and perhaps unwanted.

Implementacija sovjetskih ekonomskih metoda u jugoslovensku privredu: industrija i rudarstvo (1945−1947)

The end of the Second World War in Yugoslavia opened a number of issues related to the organization of the economy. Regarding the concept of building the economy and society, the Yugoslav communists had a clear vision of the future structure even before the end of the war. Strong political reliance on the Soviet Union, determined by the war alliance and ideological closeness, decisively influenced the choice of the economic model that was to be implemented in Yugoslavia. The transition to the Soviet-type command economy, with the aim of mastering and applying Soviet experiences in Yugoslav conditions, took place with the wholehearted help of the USSR. This paper will analyze how the methods from the Soviet economic practice were implemented in industry and mining during the two-year period of economic restoration.

Promoting Gender Equality in the Eastern Neighbourhood Region

This helpdesk report synthesises evidence on the drivers and opportunities for promoting gender equality in the Eastern Neighbourhood region. Although equality between women and men is enshrined in the constitutions and legal systems of all Eastern Neighbourhood countries, and all countries have ratified most of the important international conventions in this area without reservations; women are still subject to social discrimination. Discriminatory laws, social norms, and practices rooted in patriarchal systems inherited from the Soviet era have negative consequences and act as drags upon gender equality. Former Soviet states making the transition from a command economy to a market-driven system need to make changes in governance and accountability systems to allow for women to have agency and to benefit from any nominal status of gender equality. This report considers areas where there are outstanding opportunities to improve women’s situation in Eastern Neighbourhood countries.

Independent Guarantee and Suretyship: On the Expediency of Establishment of a Sole Private

The article is devoted to the advisability of the simultaneous existence of two named personal means of securing obligations — a suretyship and an independent guarantee. Suretyship is a traditional guaranteeing obligation that has arisen in a modern form in the law of Ancient Rome and has been developing for two millennia. In turn, an independent guarantee is the result of the evolution of an artificially created, or rather, copied from foreign banking practice, to solve the problems of the command economy by the Soviet civil law institute of guarantee. As a result of the permanent reform of domestic law of obligations, the introduction of pro-creditor approaches in the practice of resolving disputes related to securing obligations, the borders between the suretyship and an independent guarantee are washed away. Both of these means today assume a third party’s monetary liability in case of a debtor’s malfunction in a secured obligation (suretyship is de jure, and an independent guarantee is de facto). There are obvious tendencies to give the qualities of accessory independence of an independent guarantee and, on the contrary, to the formation of signs of the abstractness of suretyship. In this regard, the author makes an assumption about the further development of personal methods of securing obligations in Russian civil law.

Backwardness of Central and Eastern Europe as a Heritage of the Soviet Period

The economy of Latvia lags behind economically developed nations approximately fourfold in terms of labour productivity in the tradable sector, which is the key constituent of a modern economy, thereby affecting future sustainable development in the entire country, including the rural areas. The economic backwardness is characteristic of the entire Central and Eastern Europe. This is the heritage of a communist regime that lasted for about half a century and the economic system termed a (centrally) planned economy or a command economy. However, such a term for the communist-period economy is not correct, as it does not represent the purpose it was created for. Accordingly, the paper aims to assess the effect of the communism period on the economic backwardness of the Central and Eastern European region of the EU. A planned economy that existed in all communist countries, with the exception of Yugoslavia, was not introduced to contribute to prosperity. It was intended for confrontation or even warfare by the communist countries under the guidance of the USSR against other countries where no communism regime existed, mostly Western world nations with their market economies. For this reason, it is not correct to term it a (centrally) planned economy or a command economy; the right term is a mobilised (war) economy. An extrapolation of a geometric progression for GDP revealed that during the half a century, Latvia as part of the USSR was forced to spend on confrontation with the West not less than EUR 17 bln. (2011 prices) or approximately one gross domestic product of 2011. The research aim of the paper is to assess the effect of the communism period on the economic backwardness of the Central and Eastern European region of the EU.

Beyond Calculation: The Austrian Business Cycle in the Socialist Commonwealth

This paper extends Austrian business cycle theory to the command economy and demonstrates that Mises’s socialist commonwealth would not be free from Rothbardian error cycles, which J. Guido Hülsmann has argued must originate in “institutions in which the error of many persons is inherent.” Booms and busts are shown to be unavoidable under socialism because (1) the central planner’s incomplete understanding of the opportunity costs associated with any given rate of growth would result in growth targets that are unsustainably high and (2) the planner would be blind to the resulting imbalances until they became sufficiently severe to become “visible” in the statistical data that form her only picture of the world. In this case, Hülsmann’s “erroneous institution” is central planning, which misidentifies the state’s image of the economy with the totality of economic reality.

Cybernetics for the command economy: Foregrounding entropy in late Soviet planning

The Soviet Union had a long and complex relationship with cybernetics, especially in the domain of planning. This article looks at Soviet postwar efforts to draw up plans for the rapidly developing, industrializing, and urbanizing Siberia, where cybernetic models were used to develop a vision of cybernetic socialism. Removed from Moscow bureaucracy and politics, the various planning institutes of the Siberian Academy of Sciences became a key frontier for exploring the potential of cybernetic thinking to offer a necessary corrective to Soviet planning. Researchers there put forth a vision of a dynamic Soviet economy managed through partially automated subsystems, which, while decentralized, would grant the central planning apparatus flexibility, a capacity for emergence, and overall solvency in the face of increasingly complex factors that required consideration.

Tight or Loose Control

This chapter examines the second dilemma in the design of governance strategies, which relates to strictness of control. Leaders must choose whether to monitor and regulate behavior loosely or intensively. This is certainly true with regard to control of the everyday conduct of citizens through surveillance and policing. A similar choice must be made in the economic sphere, between a command economy and free markets. And the dilemma arises again within the apparatus of the state itself. For example, central government must decide whether to exercise more or less supervision over lower levels of government. Moreover, within each level of government, political leaders must decide whether to give more or less autonomy to bureaucrats charged with implementing their policies. In all of these contexts, similar calculations about the right measure of control must be made.