The Market-Planned Economy of Yugoslavia was first published in 1966. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The Yugoslavian economic system, combining, as it does, elements of Marxist socialism with many aspects of free enterprise, represents a challenging experiment which is being closely watched by students of economic and political theory. The system has attracted serious attention in the emerging nations of Asia and Africa and, more recently, in the Soviet Union itself. Though they retain socialist, state-centered goals, the Yugoslavs have introduced a great deal of decentralization and individual incentive and have allowed production to be largely regulated by the demand of a relatively free market instead of by predetermined quotas and plans. Professor Pejovich describes and analyzes this economic system, as it affects both the overall economy and the individual firm. He then provides a theoretical analysis in which he points out implications for economic theory and for the theory of socialism as well as the practical significance of the Yugoslavian experiment. The stud makes an important contribution in combining the economic theory of socialism formulated in the pioneering work of Oskar Lange with the theory of economic development if Joseph Schumpeter, whose concepts are discussed by Dr. Pejovich in an appendix.

Economic analysis of post-war economic developments in Yugoslavia - considers the ideologycal basis and implementation of decentralization, economic recession, and the 1963 economic reforms; looks at the transformation of the industrial enterprise, economic planning, workers self management, role of the state, etc.; analyses the functioning of the financial market, the labour market and the product market; discusses market stabilization and economic growth (incl. Employment, inflation and the balance of payments). References, statistical tables.

In the first political analysis of unemployment in a socialist country, Susan Woodward argues that the bloody conflicts that are destroying Yugoslavia stem not so much from ancient ethnic hatreds as from the political and social divisions created by a failed socialist program to prevent capitalist joblessness. Under Communism the concept of socialist unemployment was considered an oxymoron; when it appeared in postwar Yugoslavia, it was dismissed as illusory or as a transitory consequence of Yugoslavia's unorthodox experiments with worker-managed firms. In Woodward's view, however, it was only a matter of time before countries in the former Soviet bloc caught up with Yugoslavia, confronting the same unintended consequences of economic reforms required to bring socialist states into the world economy. By 1985, Yugoslavia's unemployment rate had risen to 15 percent. How was it that a labor-oriented government managed to tolerate so clear a violation of the socialist commitment to full employment? Proposing a politically based model to explain this paradox, Woodward analyzes the ideology of economic growth, and shows that international constraints, rather than organized political pressures, defined government policy. She argues that unemployment became politically "invisible," owing to its redefinition in terms of guaranteed subsistence and political exclusion, with the result that it corrupted and ultimately dissolved the authority of all political institutions. Forced to balance domestic policies aimed at sustaining minimum standards of living and achieving productivity growth against the conflicting demands of the world economy and national security, the leadership inadvertently recreated the social relations of agrarian communities within a postindustrial society.

Are multi-national corporations like Walmart and Amazon laying the groundwork for international socialism? For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us? An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People’s Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.

In this book, Milica Uvalic examines the theoretical and empirical issues related to investment in Yugoslavia since 1965. She explores investment policies, sources of finance, macroeconomic performance, enterprise incentives and current property reforms in relation to Western theory on investment behavior in the labor-managed firm and Kornai's theory on socialist economies. In line with Kornai's theory, the author argues that the fundamental causes of problems in Yugoslavia are generic to socialist economic systems, rather than the specific characteristic of self-management.