Searching for Socialist Efficiency: The Case of the Schwedt Initiative

Gary Magee and Wayne Geerling

Chapter Chapter 5 in Socialism with a Human Face, 2022, pp 167-256 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Confronted by chronic shortages and low productivity, the East German regime constantly sought ways to find savings and efficiencies. Under the mantra of “intensification” and socialist “rationalisation”, it experimented with a host of measures to free up resources. This chapter focuses its attention on one of its most significant attempts at intensification: the so-called Schwedt Initiative. This initiative provided incentives to enterprises to free up hoarded, underutilised labour, so that it could be used more productively elsewhere in the economy. Using ideas from behavioural economics, such as information cascades, the chapter explores the details of this initiative in order to shed light on the circumstances in which the system could—and could not—mobilise resources with some degree of effectiveness.

Keywords: Socialist efficiency; Schwedt Initiative; Intensification; Socialist rationalisation; East German economic history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palscp:978-981-19-0664-0_5

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-19-0664-0_5

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