Kornai: Shortage Versus Surplus Economies

Domenico Mario Nuti ()
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Domenico Mario Nuti: University of Rome

Chapter 9 in Collected Works of Domenico Mario Nuti, Volume II, 2023, pp 155-171 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The economics of institutions and comparative systems owes an enormous debt to János Kornai. This was well exemplified by Kornai (Shortage Economy—Surplus Economy, 2014a), offering a synthetic characterization of socialism and capitalism, respectively, as shortage and surplus economies. I was very fortunate, over the last fifty years, to have had many opportunities to meet him and to talk to him, and to discuss these issues directly with him. János can be very persuasive, and over the years I have somewhat converged towards his views, but in this essay, I am going to rehearse one residual major disagreement on the shortage economy, and three reservations on capitalism as the surplus economy which, after discovering from talking to him that he was in basic sympathy with them, I have downgraded to qualifications.

Keywords: Socialism; Shortages; Capitalism; Surplus; Post-socialist transition; Soft budget constraints; Inflation; Innovation; Democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E2 L2 O3 P1 P2 P3 P5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-23167-4_9

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