Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Handbook of the History of Money and Currency pp 1–28Cite as

Money, Prices and Payments in Planned Economies

  • Living reference work entry
  • Latest version View entry history
  • First Online:

  • 206 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter is an account of the role of money in planned economies, which sets the subject in both theoretical and historical frameworks. Theoretically, money in planned economies is considered to fit into the state theory of money. Historically, the changing role of money, from hyperinflation to monetary stabilization, to the initial stages of the administrative-command economy, to monetary reform, to stable money, to chronic shortageflation, to acute shortageflation and loss of monetary control, is surveyed. Attention is paid both to the similarities (medium of exchange, unit of account) and to the differences (passive money, partial equivalence, role of the banking system) between money in planned economies and money in capitalist economies. It is concluded that cash money in planned economies was an instrument, analogous to propaganda or repression, to incentivize the population to work hard to achieve the goals of the national leadership, and that noncash money was an instrument to facilitate and check plan fulfillment.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

References

  • Abalkin L (1992) K tseli cherez krizis. Spustya god. Luch, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Barendregt J (1993) The Dutch monetary purge. The monetary consequences of German occupation and their redress after liberation, 1940–1952. Tinbergen Institute research series LI: Thesis Publishers, Amsterdam

    Google Scholar 

  • Bazhan A (1990) Osobennosti inflyatsii v SSSR. Vestn Statistiki (6)

    Google Scholar 

  • Bell J, Rostowski J (1995) A note on the confirmation of Podkaminer’s hypothesis in post-liberalisation Poland. Eur Asia Stud 47(3):527–530

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bertocco G (2007) The characteristics of a monetary economy: a Keynes-Schumpeter approach. Camb J Econ 32(1)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carr EH (1958) Socialism in one country 1924–1926, vol 1. Macmillan, London

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Davies RW (1989) The Soviet economy in turmoil, 1929–1930. Macmillan, Basingstoke

    Google Scholar 

  • Davies RW (2001) Making economic policy. In: Gregory P (ed) Behind the facade of Stalin’s command economy. Hoover Institution Press, Stanford

    Google Scholar 

  • Denezhnaya (2010) Denezhnaya reforma v SSSR 1947 goda. Dokumenty i materialy. ROSSPEN, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Denezhnoe (2010) Denezhnoe obrashchenie Rossii, vol 3. Interkrim-Press, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Dzerzhinsky F (1926) Zaklyuchitel’nogo slovo tov. Dzerzhinskogo, Leningradskaya Pravda 14 Feb

    Google Scholar 

  • Ekonomicheskaya (1972) Ekonomicheskaya Entsiklopediya. Politicheskaya ekonomiya, vol 1. Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellman M (1992) Money in the 1980s. From disequilibrium to collapse. In: Ellman M, Kontorovich V (eds) The disintegration of the soviet economic system. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellman M (2000) Perestroika economics from the inside. In: Maskin E, Simonovits A (eds) Planning, shortage, and transformation. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellman M (2014) Socialist planning, 3rd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Frank R (2010) Money in socialist economies: the case of North Korea. Asia-Pacific J 8(2):1–13

    Google Scholar 

  • Gaidar E (2006) Gibel’ imperii, 2nd edn. ROSSPEN, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Garvey G (1977) Money, financial flows, and credit in the Soviet Union. NBER, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Goland Y (1994) Currency regulation in the NEP period. Eur Asia Stud 46(8):1251–1296

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goland Y (2006) Diskussii ob ekonomicheskoi politike v gody denezhnoi reformy 1921–1924. Ekonomika, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodhart C (1998) The two concepts of money: implications for the analysis of optimal currency areas. Eur J Polit Econ 14:407–432

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gregory P, Harrison M (2005) Allocation under dictatorship: research in Stalin’s archives. J Econ Lit XLIII(September):407–432

    Google Scholar 

  • Gregory P, Tikhonov A (2000) Central planning and unintended consequences: creating the Soviet financial system, 1930–1939. J Econ Hist 60(4):1017–1040

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grossman G (1986) Inflationary, political, and social implications of the current economic slowdown. In: Hohmann H, Nove A, Vogel H (eds) Economics and politics in the USSR: problems of interdependence. Westview, Boulder

    Google Scholar 

  • Harrison M, Kim B-Y (2006) Plans prices and corruption: the Soviet firm under partial centralization. J Econ Hist 66(1):1–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holzman F (1960) Soviet inflationary pressures, 1928–1957: causes and cures. Q J Econ 74(2): 167–188

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • IMF et al (1991) A study of the soviet economy, vol 1. OECD, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Kashin I, Mikov V (eds) (2010) Balansy gosudarstvennogo banka SSSR, 1922–1990 gg (Po stranitsam arkhivnykh fondov Tsentral’nogo banka Rossiiskoi Federatsii, vypusk 9). Central Bank of Russia, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Khanin G (2010) Ekonomicheskaya istoriya Rossii v noveishyeye vremya, Ekonomika SSSR i RSFSR v 1988–1991 godakh, vol 2. NGTU, Novosibirsk

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim B-Y (2002) Causes of repressed inflation in the consumer goods market, 1965–1989: retail price subsidies, the siphoning effect, and the budget deficit. Econ Hist Rev 55(1):105–127

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kleiman E (2000) Early inflation tax theory and estimates. Hist Polit Econ 32(2):233–265

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knapp G (1924) The state theory of money. Macmillan, London. 1st German edition 1905

    Google Scholar 

  • Kolodko G, McMahon W (1987) Stagflation and shortageflation: a comparative approach. Kyklos 40(2):176–197

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kornai J (1980) Economics of shortage, vol A & B. North Holland, Amsterdam

    Google Scholar 

  • Kozlov V (2002) Mass uprisings in the USSR. M.E. Sharpe, Armonk

    Google Scholar 

  • Marx K (1867) Das Kapital, vol 1. Otto Meissner, Hamburg. There is an English edition, Marx, K. (n.d.) Capital, vol 1. Progress, Moscow. The relevant passage are on pages 73–75, 90, 92–96, & 108

    Google Scholar 

  • Nakamura Y (2011) Did the Soviet command economy command money? A quantitative analysis. Eur Asia Stud 63(7):1133–1156

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nakamura Y (2017) Monetary policy in the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nakamura Y (forthcoming) The relationship between the real and the financial economy in the Soviet Union: an analysis of government debts using newly available data, Explorations in economic history

    Google Scholar 

  • Narkhoz (1987) Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR za 70 let. Finansy i statistika, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Narkhoz (1990) Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR v 1990g. Finansy i statistika, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Nuti D (1986) Hidden and repressed inflation in Soviet-type economies. Contrib Polit Econ 5:37–82

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nuti D (1992) Socialist banking. In: Newman P, Milgate M, Eatwell J (eds) The new Palgrave dictionary of money and banking, vol 3. Macmillan, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Pavlov V (1989) Pochemu my voshli v finansovyi shtopor? Kak budem iz nego vykhodit’? Ekonomicheskaya gazeta no.44. Reprinted in V. Pavlov, Finansy – nasha glavnaya zabota. Finansy i statistika, Moscow (1990). p 291

    Google Scholar 

  • Pavlov V (1995) Upushchen li shans? Terra, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Peebles G (1991) A short history of socialist money. Allen & Unwin, Sydney

    Google Scholar 

  • Podkaminer L (1982) Estimates of the disequilibria in Poland’s consumer markets, 1965–1978. Rev Econ Stat 64(3):423–431

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Podkaminer L (1988) Disequilibrium on Poland’s consumer markets. J Comp Econ 12(1):43–60

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Preobrazhensky E (2006/1920) Arkhivnye dokumenty i materialy: 1886–1920 gg. Glavarkhiv Moskvy, Moscow. Originally published in 1920 as Bumazhnye den’gi v epokhu proletarskoi diktatury. Gosizdat, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Russian (1995) Russian federation: report on the national accounts. World Bank & Goskomstat, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  • Sitnin V (1993) Sobitiya i lyudi. Luch, Moscow. Copy provided by the International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam

    Google Scholar 

  • Stalin J (1955) Works, vol 13. Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Stalin i Kaganovich (2001) O.V. Khlevnyuk et al. (comps) Stalin i Kaganovich. 1931–1936 gg. ROSSPEN, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Zverev A (1973) Zapiski ministra. Politizdat, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

  • Zverev A (2012) Stalin i den’gi. Algoritm, Moscow

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics & Business, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Michael Ellman

  2. Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge, UK

    Michael Ellman

Authors
  1. Michael Ellman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Ellman .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dpt of Economic History & Institutions, Universidad Carlos III Madrid, Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Stefano Battilossi

  2. RSCAS/Dpt of History and Civilization, European University Institute, Florence, Firenze, Italy

    Youssef Cassis

  3. School of Commerce, Waseda University, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan

    Kazuhiko Yago

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Ellman, M. (2018). Money, Prices and Payments in Planned Economies. In: Battilossi, S., Cassis, Y., Yago, K. (eds) Handbook of the History of Money and Currency. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0622-7_40-2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0622-7_40-2

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-0622-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0622-7

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Money, Prices and Payments in Planned Economies
    Published:
    28 June 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0622-7_40-2

  2. Original

    Money, Prices and Payments in Planned Economies
    Published:
    25 May 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0622-7_40-1

Search

Navigation