Acta Oeconomica 11. (1973)

1973 / 4. szám - Megyeri Endre: Optimal Utilization of Enterprise Funds and Some Problems of Measuring Effectiveness

348 E. MEGYERI: UTILIZATION OF ENTERPRISE FUNDS effectiveness. The examination of this latter question is one of the emphasized research projects planned and started within the topic “The optimal utilization and development of enterprise funds” subordinated to the national main research line “The socialist enterprise”. In the following we are going to review some questions and results of this research. Marxist economics has attained considerable results in formulating these questions and in elaborating some important aspects of theirs. From among Soviet authors I stress first of all the activity of Fedorenko, Kantoro­vich, Novozhilov and Nemchinov, while from among Hungarian economists I refer to the works of Béla Csikós-Nagy, János Kornai, György Simon, Jenő Wilcsek etc. who have dealt relatively comprehensively with the problems concerning the consistency of measuring enterprise level and national economic effectiveness, either explicitly or implicitly. Despite this fact there have remained or arisen several open and debated questions even in the course of the economic development of recent years. Reference is made to the discussed problems e.g. in a book entitled “History of the Political Economy of Social­ism” published in Leningrad, 1970, the authors of which write the following: “Is there any difference between the national economic and local (khozrazchot) effectiveness of production ? Are these differences of accidental character or do they have an objective basis ? What are the ways of co-ordinating national economic and local effectiveness? Concerning these questions there are dif­ferent opinions to be found in our literature.” [1] Discussing the theoretical­­economic tasks of measuring effectiveness Harry Nick also points out in the theoretical journal “Einheit” of the “SED”* that “ . . . all the problems of adapting the national economic criteria and procedures of effectiveness-deter­mination for the judgement of the effectiveness of enterprise activity have not been solved satisfactorily yet.” [2] The importance and topicality of examin­ing the problem is emphasized also in their recently published articles by Gatovski [3] and Atlas [4]. The newly reviving debate is very diversified partly because of the complexity of the problem and partly because of the fact that the pre­history of economic mechanisms shows certain peculiarities by countries. Our researches were aimed first of all at the following questions: — indices of national economic effectiveness on the level of individual decisions; — the possibilities and general conditions of working out enterprise effectiveness indices equivalent to those of national economic effectiveness; - the possibility and conditions of consistency regarding the profit­ability indices of different type having outstanding roles in the measurement of enterprise effectiveness; * German Socialist Unity Party. Acta Oeconomica 11, 1973

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