Highway and Byways: Studies on Reform and Postcommunist Transition - Hardcover

Inhaltsangabe

Hungarian economist János Kornai first used the metaphor of a single path topostsocialist transition in his earlier book, The Road to a Free Economy. The new metaphor thatframes this collection of recent studies reflects a broader perspective and understanding of thecomplexities of transition: every highway and byway leads eventually to capitalism, Kornai observes,but to what kind, how fast, and at what cost? Who wins and who loses?Kornai draws from hisexperiences of Hungarian reform as well as from countries of the former Soviet Union to make severalmajor points. The first three studies describe what went wrong in countries that tried to mixelements of planned and market economies. Efforts made by communist countries to introduce marketsocialism (the "middle road") contained an inherent contradiction between the logic of socialism andthe logic of a free enterprise system, and were doomed to failure.In the studies that follow, Kornaianalyzes the ongoing dilemmas. The transition from communism to free enterprise is filled withdaunting hurdles; it requires no less than redefining ownership, changing values concerning thedistribution of wealth, transferring the control of political power, creating financial institutionsand enforcing financial discipline, and making deep economic sacrifice. Kornai closes with anoverall survey of postsocialist transition, describing the stages that countries tend to go through,that will be particuarly useful to scholars of comparative economic systems.

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