Kornai János: Growth, shortage and efficiency. A macrodynamic model of the socialist economy - Yrjö Jahnsson lectures (Oxford, 1982) / angol nyelven
Professor Kornai’s stimulating book represents a new approach to the problems of socialist economies. Some of the ideas have appeared in his earlier work but here they are organized into a formal mathematical framework - a theoretical model which incorporates certain characteristic properties of growth and control in Eastern European economies. It extends the microeconomic work of this leading theorist of non-Walrasian systems into macroeconomics. The growth of Eastern European economies follows a pattern different from the growth pattern of other systems. The greater part of production is generated by state-owned firms. Because of this the drive to invest is strong and growth rates are generally high. At the same time, development is accompanied by chronic shortages of consumer and producer goods, labour and investment resources. On the one hand, shortage stimulates growth - in a sellers’ market future sales are assured. On the other hand, shortage retards growth - it causes friction and inefficiencies in production and marketing. This book presents a dynamic macromodel of the system as a set of difference equations. The discussion shows that, under certain conditions, the system is viable and able to grow. It has a built-in control bringing it back to normal if disturbed. It is thus in some senses stable. These same control mechanisms, however, ensure that the chronic shortages are permanently reproduced.