A hiány újratermelése

The reproduction of shortage

János Kornai

Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), 2014, vol. LXI, issue 10, 1139-1157

Abstract: Sporadic lack of consumer articles, the housing shortage, disturbances of material supply, and shortages of investment goods and of labour may be traced back to a common main cause. Shortage is constantly reproduced by specific features of the economic mechanism. The first part of the article consists of micro-analysis, mainly of the productive enterprise. Efforts to increase production may run up against ceilings of three kinds: constraints on physical resources, constraints on demand, and the budget constraint on enterprises. It is an important feature of a system which of these constraints takes effect. Resource-constrained systems can be distinguished from demand-constrained ones here. In the former, production is limited by production bottlenecks, in the latter by buyer demand. The socialist economy in its classical" form belongs to the former type. It is related to whether the budget constraint on the enterprise is hard" or soft". If hard, enterprise spending is limited by its financial scope, if soft (its losses offset almost automatically) its demand becomes almost insatiable. The second part performs a macro-analysis, showing the mechanism of suction" with the aid of a hydraulic analogy. The enterprise sector pumps away" reserves and surpluses of the system, mainly due to the investment hunger" that appears in the wake of expansionist efforts. Finally the article discusses briefly the interrelations between shortage and inflation.

JEL-codes: P20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.kszemle.hu/tartalom/letoltes.php?id=1508 (application/pdf)
Registration and subscription. 3-month embargo period to non-subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ksa:szemle:1508

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation) Budapest, Budaörsi út 45., 1112, Hungary
http://www.kszemle.hu/elofizetes/

Access Statistics for this article

Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) is currently edited by Tamás Halm

More articles in Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) from Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Odon Sok ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).