Homo Economicus in the Shortage Economy

Hana Lipovská (), Lucie Coufalová and Libor Žídek ()
Additional contact information
Hana Lipovská: Masaryk University
Libor Žídek: Masaryk University

DANUBE: Law and Economics Review, 2018, issue 4, 207–226

Abstract: Rational agents react to incentives in the market economy as well as in the centrally planned economy. Economic laws are persistent regardless of the economic system. The legislative system changes the outcome of the game between economic agents and managers. The aim of this paper is to show how rational agents reacted to legislative incentives in the Soviet-type economy in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s, that is, how they reacted to the general shortage in the centrally planned economy. Based on the original survey among former managers as well as on the legislative sources from the 1970s and 1980s, a taxonomy was made of economic reactions to the shortage economy. This survey was possibly the last chance to map the experiences of socialist managers who tried to run companies in the centrally planned economy. We distinguish plan manipulation in order to ensure payment bonuses; bribery in order to obtain short-supplied inputs and the creation of reserves for the purpose of fulfilling the plan. It was shown that, if the rational agent wanted to obey the higher law, he was forced to ignore lower legislation.

Keywords: Economic Crimes; Legal Cases; Shortage Economy; State Development Plan; Socialist Enterprises (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.eaco.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/lipovska-coufalova-zidek.pdf (application/pdf)

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:cmn:journl:y:2018:i:4:p:207-226

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in DANUBE: Law and Economics Review from European Association Comenius - EACO
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Helena Campbelle ().