When and why did eastern European economies begin to fail? Lessons from a Czechoslovak/UK productivity comparison, 1921-1991

Stephen Broadberry and Alexander Klein

Explorations in Economic History, 2011, vol. 48, issue 1, 37-52

Abstract: Czechoslovak industrial labour productivity fluctuated around two-thirds of the UK level under the private sector regime between the wars. Under the central planning regime of the postwar period, Czechoslovakia's comparative productivity position initially improved to around three-quarters of the UK level by the early-1960s, before falling back. During the 1980s, the deterioration of Czechoslovakia's productivity performance accelerated sharply, falling to around one-third of the UK level. Central planning was able to achieve a satisfactory productivity performance during the era of mass production, but could not adapt to the requirements of flexible production technology during the 1980s.

Keywords: Industrial; productivity; Czechoslovakia; Britain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014-4983(10)00043-4
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:exehis:v:48:y:2011:i:1:p:37-52

Access Statistics for this article

Explorations in Economic History is currently edited by R.H. Steckel

More articles in Explorations in Economic History from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().