János Kornai’s Contributions to Economic Analysis

Assar Lindbeck

No 724, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: The publication of János Kornai’s memoirs, By Force of Thought, provides an excellent opportunity to remind ourselves of Kornai’s great contributions to economic research. This paper discusses both his basic research strategy and some of his main research results. Kornai has usually dealt with great, system-oriented issues, and he has been more inspired by real-world observations than by scholarly work by others. The paper also emphasizes that Kornai’s two most celebrated characterizations of real world socialist economies – "shortage economies" and production units with "soft budget constraints" – are analytically closely connected. Kornai also, in his more recent works, regards the centralized political system during communism as the basic explanation for the centralized nature of the economic system in these countries.

Keywords: Socialism; Soft Budget Constraints; Shortage Economy; Economic Centralization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B24 B31 L10 P20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9 pages
Date: 2007-12-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba and nep-hpe
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0724

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