COERCION, COMPLIANCE AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET,ND ECONOMY

Mark Harrison ()

No 269372, Economic Research Papers from University of Warwick - Department of Economics

Abstract: Are command systems that rest on coercion inherently unstable, and did the Soviet economy collapse for this reason? Postwar evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the Soviet economy was unstable. If it was not unstable, why did it collapse? A repeated game of coordination between a dictator and producers shows that a high level of coercion may yield a stable high–output equilibrium, that the command economy contains a time–consistency problem for central planners, and that a transition to a low state of coercion and performance in which everyone’s income falls may be brought about by rising monitoring costs and the dictator’s loss of reputation. The facts of the Soviet case are consistent with a collapse triggered when the dictator threw in the towel.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; International Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39
Date: 2001-03-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/269372/files/twerp602.pdf (application/pdf)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/269372/files/twerp602.pdf?subformat=pdfa (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:ags:uwarer:269372

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.269372

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic Research Papers from University of Warwick - Department of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().