Kornai János: Overcentralization in economic administration. A critical analysis based on experience in Hungarian light industry (Oxford, 1994) / angol nyelven
Overcentralization in Economic Administration (Oxford 1959) was the first book written by an East European and published in the West that openly criticized socialist central planning. In this work the distinguished economist János Kornai begins a lifelong study of the economic organization of centrally planned economies. Professor Kornai’s aim in this book was to observe the reality of the working socialist system, and to draw conclusions that were not distorted by the laws of Marxist political economy. He provided a lucid and coherent account of conditions, along with normative recommendations which influenced the Hungarian reform process, culminating in the economic changes of 1968. Professor Kornai identified several systemic failures of the centrally planned economy, and gave a prescient account of weak economic performance and eventual disintegration. His argument for radical rather than partial change makes this book still interesting reading for those involved in the economics of transition taking place in Eastern Europe today. This volume is now reissued by Oxford University Press, with a new Preface by Professor Kornai which discusses the context in which he was originally writing, and with a detailed history of the original edition, and its reception. János Kornai is Professor of Economics at Harvard University and at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, sharing his time between the two institutions. He is the author of a number of books of socialist economics, including The Socialist System, published by Oxford University Press and Princeton University Press, 1992.