The Nature of Socialist Economics

Lessons from Eastern European Foreign Trade

Peter Murrell

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780691606422, 9780691635170
• eBook ISBN: 9781400860869
• Topic: Volkswirtschaftslehre
• Subtopic: Internationale Wirtschaftswissenschaften

What are the sources of the well-known differences in the performance of capitalist and socialist economic systems? Peter Murrell argues that the Schumpeterian model has far more power to answer this question than does the neoclassical theory generally used for that purpose. The neoclassical theory focuses on the absence of a price system and the inability of a centralized system to allocate resources efficiently, while the Schumpeterian model emphasizes the rigidity of institutions and policies in socialist economies and their lack of mechanisms either to create new institutions or to identify and to foster the growth of the most efficient organizations (including multinational corporations). In a work that will have profound consequences for the analysis of economic reform in socialist economies, Murrell compares the predictions of these two models against data summarizing foreign trade performance and finds the Schumpeterian model clearly superior. Combining international trade theory and econometric techniques, the author develops new methods of comparative economic analysis. These methods provide new information on the values of eleven resource endowments implicit in trade, the degree to which the socialist countries fit standard models of trade, the effect of multinational corporations on trade, and myriad other features of economic performance.

Originally published in 1990.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. An Overview of the Research, the Theories Underlying the Interpretation of the Results, and the Conclusions
• Chapter 2. The Variables Used in the Analysis: Their Properties and Sources of Data
• Chapter 3. International Trade Theory and the Centrally Planned Economies
• Chapter 4. Qualitative Information on Nonstandard Trade Determinants: Summary Statistics from Trade Data
• Chapter 5. The Econometrics of Estimating Endowments Implicit in Trade Decisions and Measuring Country Conformity to Trade Models
• Chapter 6. The Levels of Resource Endowments Implicit in Eastern European Trade Patterns: Estimates for Eleven Endowments
• Chapter 7. Measuring How Closely the Trade Patterns of Socialist and Capitalist Economies Fit Standard Trade Models
• Epilogue the Results and Some Questions They Raise
• Appendix A Do RCAs Reveal Comparative Advantage?
• Appendix B Derivation of Equations Representing Trade Models
• Appendix C Interpreting the Values of RCAs in the Presence of Lntraindustry Trade
• Appendix D Interpreting the Estimates in the Presence of Missing Data
• References
• Index