Economics textbook presenting a formal description and economic analysis of the centrally planned economy of the type of the USSR economic system - provides a representative survey of the main applications and techniques of national planning pertinent to the centralization type of planning and economic modelling, etc. Flow charts, graphs, references and statistical tables.

A comprehensive analysis of the Soviet economy from a legal perspective, this book discusses the Soviet theory of legal regulation of economic activity and the formal structure of economic legislation. The authors argue that two contradictory tendencies characterize the Soviet economic regulatory system: reform and retreat from reform. Legal reform efforts usually result from the attempt to increase economic efficiency, which typically involves according greater independence to lower-level economic organizations. The danger that political power might be undermined, however, eventually leads to the reestablishment of the dominance of the central authorities over lower-level decisionmaking. Drs. Ioffe and Maggs also examine the tensions in labor law, which must reconcile the needs of the economy for job mobility and high worker morale with administrative ideals of strict discipline, and the legal aspects of technology transfer. In addition, emphasis is placed on the ways that economic legislation is developed and applied in practice; the authors note in particular the progress that has been made in systemization and codification of economic legislation.

Can the economics of Eastern Europe make the dramatic transition from centrally-planned to market-led economics? This book tries to understand the intellectual background behind this change and the problems of managing it.

Although the Soviet Union's centrally planned economic system played a significant role in world economic growth and modernization, it ultimately failed to compete with market forms of economic organization. Despite unavailing efforts at reform, it has now been abandoned, as the republics of the former USSR move painfully toward the market. Robert W. Campbell, one of the most respected U.S. specialists on the economy of the former Soviet Union, probes the evolution, behavior, and fatal weaknesses of the Soviet administrative-command economy. His essays cover a broad set of perspectives--theoretical interpretation of the Soviet-type economy and the growth model that went with it, concrete analyses of individual sections and functions, evaluation of the microeconomics of Soviet decision making, and descriptions of attempts at institutional and doctrinal reforms. They provide instructive background on some of the biggest problems now facing the Commonwealth of Independent States, such as the monetary and fiscal collapse engendered by reform, the looming fuel and energy disaster, and the seemingly intractable task of transforming the military-industrial complex and integrating its resources into the civilian economy. Robert W. Campbell's outstanding work provides an indispensable resource for understanding what the Soviet economic system was and the problems it faced in the transition to the market model.