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Soviet Economic Reform

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Abstract

‘Soviet economic reform’ refers to repeated failed attempts from the 1960s to the 1980s to introduce market-inspired institutions into a command economy. These reforms aimed to increase the discretion of enterprise managers and give them incentives to use local information in executing commands while also attending to customers’ demand. Reform arrangements, such as reduction in the number of commands and stress on profit and sales, clashed with the vital functions of the command mechanism, impaired performance, and were eventually reversed, only to be reintroduced later with similar consequences.

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Kontorovich, V. (2018). Soviet Economic Reform. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2160

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