Padma Desai

Going Global: Transition from Plan to Market in the World Economy

The transition of the former socialist and otherwise centrally planned economies into the world trading and financial system has become a major concern to both policymakers and social scientists. In this book experts from diverse economies address the principal issues raised by this transition. The chapters, which cover fourteen countries of East and Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Asia, are the result of a three-year research project. Although the contributors share a unity of design and analysis, each author focuses on the issues most relevant to the country or countries under discussion. In her introductory essay, project leader Padma Desai synthesizes the findings and cuts through recent analytical confusion over such issues as shock therapy versus gradualism. Rather than advocate the faster the better, she discusses the possible difficulty of sustaining rapid transition reforms and globalization in the face of rising unemployment. The countries discussed are the Czech Republic, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic (now eastern Germany), Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, China, Vietnam, and India.

The Soviet Economy: Problems and Prospects

Desai, a leading Sovietologist, brings together in this volume many influential analyses of Soviet economic performance: its innovativeness, its allocative efficiency, the optimality and flexibility of its foreign trade, the constraints afflicting its agriculture, the efficacy of its resort to foreign credits, and its economic relations with the Third World. She provides the first coherent framework for the vast theoretical, econometric and institutional literature now available on the failings of the Soviet economy. This edition includes a substantial new preface updating the analysis. The author reviews the several formidable problems Gorbachev faces in achieving systemic change in the Soviet economy and how he has dealt with them to date. She reaches a cautiously optimistic conclusion regarding the soundness of his strategy.

Total factor productivity in postwar Soviet industry and its branches

Abstract The Cobb-Douglas production function with a declining rate of technical change or of total factor productivity growth (TFP) emerges as the dominant model for explaining the output-growth retardation in postwar Soviet industry when two sets of output data, from Soviet sources and from the CIA, are used for estimating Cobb-Douglas and CES specifications. Rates of output growth and TFP, though low, are higher with Soviet than with CIA data. However, their relative divergence is smaller in those industrial branches where Soviet output data are not exaggerated and where the CIA sample is representative of the branch output. J. Comp. Econ. , March 1985, 9(1), pp. 1–23. Columbia University, New York, New York 10027.

Efficiency Loss from Resource Misallocation in Soviet Industry

The paper analyzes the problems that arise in estimating the efficiency loss from misallocation of resources in Soviet industry, as revealed by the inequality of marginal rates of substitution among factors in the eight branches of Soviet industry. Econometric estimates of production functions in these branches are utilized to reach estimates of the loss arising from interbranch misallocation of capital and labor deployed in Soviet industry. This loss appears to be nonnegligible, ranging from a low of about 3 to 4 percent to a high of 10 percent of efficient factor use, and to be rising over time. Thus, an added reason for the current deceleration in Soviet industrial (and overall) growth is suggested.

Russian Retrospectives on Reforms from Yeltsin to Putin

The kamikaze crew of liberal reformers, picked by former President Boris Yeltsin in the early 1990s, succeeded in overturning the planned economy and the authoritarian political arrangements of seven decades of Soviet Communism. However, the resulting breakdown of political cohesion and the urgency of restoring stability prompted Yeltsin to select Vladimir Putin as his successor. The consolidating impetus under Putin, who was elected president in early 2000, has raised concerns about the continuation of economic and political reforms under his leadership. In this essay, nine Russian interviewees look back on the reform issues under Yeltsin and look ahead on the unfolding political economy scenario under Putin. They include three principle economic reformers under Yeltsin, three economic policy analysts, and three banking professionals.

Wage Arrears, Poverty, and Family Survival Strategies in Russia

In this paper we use a longitudinal survey of Russian households for analyzing the impact of wage arrears on the incidence of poverty among families and their survival strategies. The failure of enterprises and government to fully pay workers in a timely fashion is shown to be associated with a higher incidence of poverty; a similar effect is found for pensioners experiencing pension arrears. As a result of pay delays, we find that individuals and families were more likely to take second jobs, increase home production for own-consumption and sale, reduce their rate of saving, sell family assets, and receive transfers of goods and money from relatives (which, in turn, reduce the effect of wage non-payment on poverty). Wage non-payment also contributed to a rise in barter between workers and firms, although the monetary value of these goods and services did little to arrest the upward trend in outstanding net debt to workers.

A Short-Term Planning Model for the Indian Economy

HE purpose of this paper is to present a T short-term planning model for the Indian economy. It involves (a) the formulation and implementation of an input-output model for India, closed with respect to all household consumption except that originating from government employees, and (b) an endogenous determination of the distribution of consumption expenditure among several groups of households, each group having a specific consumption pattern. The paper is divided into three sections. An attempt is made in section I to classify the economy into several sectors. In section II, we calculate the intersectoral transfers of intermediate products as well as final goods and services. Section III presents the planning model and considers the possibilities of using it for planning purposes.

Why Is Russian GDP Growth Slowing

Driven by expanding oil production and investment, the Russian economy began the new millennium with robust real GDP growth averaging close to 6 percent from 1999 to 2004. However, GDP growth, a remarkable 7 ½ percent in 2004, was down to 5 ½ percent in 2005. Oil production and investment in the economy also began a growth slowdown from mid-2004. Again, core inflation of 10 percent in 2004, excluding the volatile food and energy prices, rose to 12 percent in 2005. These economic features with some deterioration starting from mid-2004 raise two issues that are analyzed in this paper. Does the Russian economy carry the burden of the Dutch Disease contributing to its growth slowdown? More to the point, does the continuing real appreciation of the ruble, associated with expanding oil exports and the strong economy, damage the manufacturing sector via reduced competitiveness of its exports and import substitutes? i The second issue relates to the impact of the escalating taxation of the oil sector on investment in the economy and its growth. Is the impact negative suggesting a fiscal drag during the sample period adopted in the paper? The basic data used for investigating these two hypotheses are presented in figures 1-6 of section II. The Vector Auto Regression (VAR) models, employed for testing the impact of real ruble appreciation on manufacturing sector performance and the impact of oil taxation on investment, are stated in section II. The VAR-based estimates in section III suggest two conclusions: the continuing ruble appreciation seems to have a negative impact on the manufacturing sector performance but the result is statistically not significant. On the other hand, rising oil taxation in a given period has a negative,

Is the Soviet Union subsidizing Eastern Europe

Abstract Marrese and Vanous (1983) have produced data which suggests that intra-CMEA pricing has implied a USSR subsidy to the CMEA Six of

Socialism and Indian Economic Policy

87 billion between 1960 and 1980. The paper discusses the transfer-theoretic interpretation of these numbers which is implicitly suggested by the authors, but shows that another explanation is possible using customs union theory. It is possible that starting from an initially suboptimal situation the Soviet Union gains in spite of poor terms of trade, while the Six lose.