Centrally planned economies (CPEs) account for about a third of the world's population and about a fourth of its output. In view of their importance in the world economy, they need to be included in international comparitive studies. Their inclusion, however, presents problems for several reasons. First, CPEs report net material product, not gross national product (GNP). Also, their prices are set and exchange rates are set administratively, so that conversion to dollars is problematic. Finally, they compute growth rates using methods that in most cases are strongly upward biased. This report tries to identify and evaluate alternative methods for computing the levels and growth rates of the GNPs of centrally planned economies and to undertake illustrative benchmark year computations.

The paper considers the theoretical and practical problems connected with the estimation Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the centrally planned economy of Czechoslovakia. In the methodological part the basic differences between the SNA (System of National Accounts) and MPS (Material Product System) accounting systems are discussed and several transformation procedures are presented. The price formation used in Czechoslovak MPS aggregates is briefly described before the problem of converting the data in national currency to US dollars is highlighted. Alternative GDP estimates, exchange rates and growth rates are compared. Own estimates, based on the purchasing parity type comparison with Austria, are presented in comparison with official Czechoslovak indexes. The appendices contain the detailed description of MPS/SNA transformation procedures as well as the statistical tables illustrating the process of GDP reconstruction based on Czechoslovak data for the period 1970-1990.

With a foreword by Seymour Lipset, Hoover Institution and George Mason University, USAThe Fall examines one of the twentieth century's great historical puzzles: why did the communist-led regimes in Eastern Europe collapse so quickly and why was the process of collapse so different from country to country? This major study explains why the impetus for change in Poland and Hungary came from the regimes themselves, while in Czechoslovakia and East Germany it was mass movements which led to the downfall of the regimes.

This paper reviews the official estimates of Romania's net material product (NMP) and gross domestic product (GDP) and the underlying methods. It also reviews the data on growth rates of NMP and GDP. The paper identified possible sources for biases in the estimates of levels of NMP or GDP in the agricultural, services and foreign trade sectors and also of the growth rates of overall NMP and GDP. It then considers a few alternative exchange rates to convert the national currency GDP into US dollars and shows resulting per capita GDP numbers in US dollars.