The Kosygin Reform: From Conception to Curtailment

Since the fall of communism, the occupational health and safety system in Poland, which was extensively developed during the post-war period, has been incrementally adapting to the new social order. The reforms of the 1990s aimed at stimulating active participation by workers and labor unions, increasing the responsibility of employers, reducing the paternalistic role of the state, and strengthening the enforcement branch. The emergent system has many strengths, including a highly branched-out system of regional and local enforcement agencies, competent and self-confident government institutions familiar with the firms under their jurisdiction and adept at balancing competing social objectives; a tradition of cooperation among agencies and employers; and strong advocacy by the government agencies on behalf of workers. The system also exhibits characteristics that may weaken it in the future, such as lack of support from labor unions; low interest among workers; a generally low safety culture; stringent, often unimplementable exposure standards; and lack of “ownership” of the system by social groups other than the state bureaucracy.

Economic reform in China Athar Hussain and Nicholas Stern This paper examines some problems of transition from a command to a market economy through an analysis of the most important example to date – the reforms in the Chinese economy since the late 1970s. Our focus is on the links between enterprise reforms, effective demand and public finance. The reforms have created a curious and problematic hybrid of market and command economies with serious problems of coordination. They have concentrated almost exclusively on the delegation of decision-making to enterprises from the higher to lower tiers of the government without taking into account its implications for investment, consumption and public finance. An understanding of future policy and lessons for other countries requires a careful examination of the effects of these past policies. Granting discretion to enterprises over investment and wages has resulted in both an investment and consumption boom but, paradoxically, a fall in profits. There are strong reasons to suppose that the investment ratio has been too high in recent years, fuelling inflation and slowing additions to supply by prolonging the gestation period of investment. There has been a large increase in liquid assets in the hands of households, which makes their expectations increasingly important for macroeconomic policy. There is need for concerted financial innovation to diversify household wealth away from liquid assets. Finally, the changes in the composition of government revenue and expenditure are disturbing. There is an urgent need for a flexible and broad-based tax system and for reducing price subsidies and subsidies to loss-making enterprises.

This paper discusses issues related to the sequencing of the reforms that are necessary to transform the economies in Eastern Europe into market economies. It is first argued that the transition path of these economies will be smoother and less costly if a clear statement of the ultimate goals of the reforms is made at the outset. Interdependence between different aspects of the reforms implies that an appropriate strategy is to move on a broad front from the very beginning of the transformation process dealing simultaneously with macroeconomic stabilization, price reforms and convertibility, and privatization of state enterprises. It is also argued that a rapid reform process is preferable to a gradual one

ITis significant that Joseph Schumpeter entered our field in the year I906 with a study on mathematical methods in theoretical economics.' This, his very first work, contains the points from which his own original research took its departure. Reading it today, one gains not only an impression of its author's comprehensive familiarity with the literature on mathematical economics that had by then been published, but of the influence which the study of these works exerted on young Schumpeter. Reared in the atmosphere of the Vienna School, he was attracted far more by the views of such as Cournot, Jevons, Edgeworth, Marshall, and above all Leon Walras. What Walras meant to him is seen plainly from the obituary for the founder of the Lausanne School which he published four years later in the same journal. When look back today on the life of this scholar, he wrote, we are struck by the simple grandeur that lies in uncompromising devotion to a single task. The impression is as of a natural phenomenon, powerful, self-evident, of foreordained necessity. The study of problems in pure economics -such was the content of that career, to the exclusion of all else. Schumpeter was really describing his own scientific ideal, one to which he clung to the end of his life. Walras was his great model, the man whom he held in higher esteem than any other. He once told me that whoever failed to study and understand Walras was unlikely ever to become a good economist. And, indeed, his first great work, which attracted world-wide attention to him at the age of only twenty-five, came into being against a background of Walrasian thinking. His Das Wesen und Hauptinhalt der theoretischen Nationalokonomie (Nature and Main Content of Theoretical Economics, Leipzig, I908) breathes the spirit of Lausanne rather than Vienna. The book, written in the brilliant style peculiar to Schumpeter, is at once a program and a profession of faith. I hold aloof from practical politics and recognize no purpose other than knowledge. ... We seek to understand rather than to engage in polemics, to learn rather than to criticize, to work out the elements of truth in every theorem rather than simply to accept or reject (Preface, pp. vi, vii). The work is essentially a study in methodology and epistemology. One looks to it in vain for a systematic presentation of theory. It seeks, rather, to set forth the principles that should, in the author's view, govern the pursuit of theoretical economics as such. Solutions of concrete problems are presented only by way of example and in illustration of his methodological reasoning. The book, nevertheless, touches on all the central problems of theory, and foreshadows the approaches toward their solution which Schumpeter elaborated in his later works. Even this first outline contains nearly all the thoughts that only later came to full maturity. The concepts of statics and dynamics, the imputation problem, questions of price theory, the distribution theory, the principles of the theory of money, the method of variations, interest as a phenomenon in economic development -all these are found in this work. To be sure, much of what Schumpeter then had to say on these questions e.g., the definition of static and dynamic economies appears in a different light today and was viewed differently even by him later on. He still held at the time that the phenomenon of economic development was not susceptible to the same kind of exact treatment as the problem of static equilibrium, and in this respect the latest elaboration of dynamic theory has not upheld him. Nor has his thesis of the nonexistence of interest in a stationary economy proved tenable. But that is not what matters. The value of the book must be judged by the message it brought to its contemporaries at the time it was published. In a period that paid little heed to exact theory, 'The editor is indebted to Heinz Norden for translating this essay from the German. 2 Zeitschrift fur Volkswirtschaft, Sozialpolitik und Verwaltung, Volume I5 (I906), pp. 30-49.

Focus on Authors

Since the 1990s, the development of a market-oriented economy and engagement with globalization have given China a role as the primary export platform of the East Asian economy. This has not only promoted the exports of capital and intermediate goods of other East Asian economies, but it has also deepened the regional production networks under the US-dominated global economic system. Currently, as China is entering an economic “new normal,” its economic structure and growth pattern will experience a period of transition. Thus, its role in the East Asian economy and the global economic system will change accordingly. China's new role as a main market for the final consumer goods in the region might increase. To facilitate its change in role, China should continue to reform its domestic economy, develop regional economic cooperation, and increase the qualities of its labour force and foreign direct investment inflows. In addition, it needs to deal with several uncertainties that might arise during the transition.

The curriculum of economic cybernetics was one of a kind in Estonia. This interestingly called curriculum was opened at the Tartu State University (TSU) in 1967, and 25 young students of economic cybernetics were admitted. Before that some earlier scholars had also completed a similar curriculum in TSU on the basis of a special programme. Students who had completed the curriculum received a diploma that listed economist-cyberneticist as their specialty (in case of some graduating classes also economist-mathematician). During 1972–1996, 25 regular classes of economic cyberneticists graduated from the university, and there are altogether 462 alumni of economic cybernetics. The structure of the TSU’s curriculum of economic cybernetics proceeded from pan-Soviet standards and obligatory subjects that had to be included in a curriculum. Yet, there was a small leeway in building a curriculum. Lecturers also had quite a lot of freedom in presenting the content of specific subjects, especially in the case of subjects that united knowledge about mathematics and economics, as well as offered opportunities to use mathematical methods and contemporary computing technology for analysing and planning economic processes. It took students five years to complete the economic cybernetics curriculum. Study practice and doing empirical research projects with an applied output played an important part throughout the studies. Students were expected to be very independent, creative and to make a large individual contribution in doing their research work. The teaching primarily relied on the learning-by-doing principle. As a conclusion it can be said that the curriculum of economic cybernetics allowed the Soviet-time graduates from the Faculty of Economics to get an economic education that was largely independent of the ideology of the socialist economic system and based on a good knowledge of mathematics. The economic education that the graduates received allowed them to cope well on the labour market and in quickly changing circumstances, even when people had to adapt to the requirements of market economy, and when large rearrangements needed to be made also in the field of economic science and the respective education. In connection to the extensive rearrangements in economic education and curricula that started in the 1990s, economic cybernetics smoothly transitioned into the specialty of economic modelling, and the process ended with the opening of Quantitative Economics—a new international English-language curriculum—in the Autumn of 2014.

The debate on women in corporate boards has been intense. Part IV identified current research findings on the case for women on boards at different levels of analysis. Taken together, these findings make a compelling argument for increasing the number and overall proportion (or critical mass) of women on corporate boards. The key question, however, is how best to achieve this from a policy perspective. Broadly speaking, there are two approaches. The first one, and one which is gaining momentum in national policy debates, is to mandate women’s representation through a legal quota regime. The second approach involves creating environments conducive to promoting female representation on boards, and using codes of corporate governance to encourage companies to reflect on their practices and policies towards gender diversity on boards. And, of course, countries may chose to ignore the issue altogether. Before introducing the contributions in Part V, it is therefore apposite to reflect on these approaches, both within a broader political economy, legal regimes and economic development debate, as well as in relation to the experiences with these approaches to date. Political economists have long been interested in the extent to which market-based economies differ in their institutional and coordination structures, and whether and how such differences translate into variances in economic performance (Hall and Soskice, 2001). This ‘varieties of capitalism’ perspective contrasts liberal market economies (LMEs) at one end of the spectrum with coordinated market economies (CMEs) at the other (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Hall and Gingerich, 2009), with some scholars adding mixed-market economies (MMEs), a group which shares some similarities with the CMEs (Hall and Gingerich, 2009).

Modern global trends in improving the quality of education in the structure of the knowledge economy require a deep study of the world experience in assessing added academic value. The methodology for assessing added academic value has found wide practical implementation in the European educational space, but has not yet received recognition among the Ukrainian educational community. This methodological tool can become an innovative platform for transformation processes in the Ukrainian educational system under martial law and in the post-war period. Assessing added academic value will help determine the effectiveness of each educational institution as a player in the educational services and labor market. When assessing added academic value, a complex vector of internal academic and external social factors is taken into account. After a thorough study of the practical experience of implementing the methodology for determining added academic value in the global educational space, this vector of influencing factors should be adapted to modern Ukrainian realities. Regression models of this methodology should be based on tools of independent external assessment, modern systems for assessing the level of education and intellectual growth of each educational entity. The careful, gradual and planned implementation of this educational toolkit should contribute to increasing motivation to improve the educational process, strengthening mutual ties between government agencies, educational institutions, business and society.

The paper examines the consideration of the problem of sustainable development in crises (including in the war and the postwar period). It evaluates how sustainable development research is changing and what tools modifications are needed for mathematical modelling these processes in this case. The author considers the examples of possible transformation of such problems in current conditions. The proposed research is based on the previous work of the authors on sustainable development, modelling of social and economic systems, and problems in education and science. In particular, the possibility of applying models from the class of ordinary differential equations, their systems, cellular automata, neural networks, multiagent systems, system dynamics and network theory, various databases and geographic information systems is emphasized. The approach’s main feature is to consider the possibility of formalizing the proposed sustainable development tasks, especially in crisis conditions. As a result of research and development, new knowledge was gained about the relevant processes, problem statements and the choice of mathematical models and methods for their study. The offered research and developments will help to consider specific tasks of sustainable development of functioning of Ukraine, including functions of education and science and many other things. Such research will help ensure the sustainable development of Ukraine in light of the conditions of war. Among the sections of the concept of sustainable development, an important place is taken by the influence of the role and impact of the human factor on the behaviour of large social systems. This can be addressed as conditionally questions of mentality. Among them, archetypal issues are essential. The archetype can be conditionally called the field of research, which considers the deep structures of consciousness, their stability and possible changes. In times of crisis, investigation into the influence of mental constructions and their possible changes is becoming increasingly important.

Social market economy (SME) is a socio-economic model which attempts to unite the freedom of a competitive market economy with social equilibrium and progress. It is seen as a “third path” besides a purely liberal market economy and an economy which is heavily regulated by the state – in the SME there is an intermediate degree of regulation. Historically, the model corresponds to the real economic policy of the German Federal Republic after the 1950s, thus it is sometimes called Rhine capitalism. According to the Treaty of Lisbon from 2007, the European Union pursues a competitive social market economy with full employment and social progress. On one hand, this model wishes to exploit the advantages of a free market economy, especially its high efficiency in the production of goods, while on the other hand it uses state intervention to correct for potential negative outcomes from market processes. Further characteristics of this model are: ensuring competition, free price formation, private property, motivating performance through profit aspirations as well as guarding personal freedoms. Last but not least, this model encompasses a strong structural policy by encouraging weaker geographical regions or industries. Therefore, it is highly probable that such a socio-economic model might be the appropriate alternative to fuel a sustainable growth of the Romanian economy. Using county level data, from the National Institute of Statistics and from the National Office of the Trade Register, for the year 2015 we show that the Romanian economy is highly polarized with a few growth poles (islands) and a large number of underdeveloped units. Thus, it becomes obvious that these important disparities will hinder a future sustainable development and by consequence a clear “road-map” represented by this economic model might prove to be a viable solution for the Romanian economy.

The relevance of this study lies in the analysis of empirical data obtained from official statistics, which illustrate the problems and changes in the demographic situation in Russia, including during the Great Patriotic War. The main goal of the study is to identify trends in the development of demographic indicators during the war years, the post-war recovery period, and the 1990s and 2000s, when the country was transitioning from a planned to a market economy. The study also examines the consequences of these changes have continued to the present day. As is well known, a market economy implies the existence of various forms of ownership, the development of entrepreneurship and competition, as well as free pricing. The article comprehensively covers the trends in urban and rural population over the specified periods, examines migration flows, and analyzes marriage and divorce rates, as well as birth and death rates. The work employs statistical methodology, which includes assessing the dynamics and calculating the correlation coefficients between the main demographic indicators. Demographic information used to solve practical problems has a number of features: information about the population size is momentary in nature (there are differences between data at a specific point in time and data available to managers); the population is a dynamic object that constantly changes due to birth rates, death rates, and migration patterns. For operational management, preliminary information is used that is slightly behind the actual time.

This paper examines the topic of changes in central parts of large cities in Poland that have occurred in the post-war period, which can be divided into two stages with different factors shaping urban space. The rebuilding of cities in Poland following destruction brought by WWII was one of the elements of building the socialist city. This process was frequently planned, often steered, unlike the dynamic processes initiated along with the political and socio-economic transformation of the 1990s, which took place already under market economy conditions. Three categories of city centres were distinguished according to the scope of rebuilding and the direction of post-war morphological changes: cities where changes were slight (Łódź, Kraków), partly reconstructed cities (Wrocław, Poznań), rebuilt and completely reconstructed cities (Gdańsk, Szczecin, Warszawa). In the post-war period, the city centres in question were characterized by diverse forms and scope of rebuilding of war damage, scale of expansion of the transport network, decline of the industrial function, development of large commercial complexes in the direct neighbourhood of the old centre, expansion of the office function and buildings and revitalization and revalorization of historical fabric.

Recent studies by economists such as Piketty (2013, 2019) and Atkinson (2015) have contested the well-established view that post-war redistribution policies have been successful in the long term at slowing down the rise of structural inequalities. In reality, the claim goes, they have dealt mostly with reducing inequalities of income through redistribution and have left inequalities of wealth and capital ownership uncontrolled. These, according to their studies, have now risen in the developed world and reached levels more typical of 19th Century Europe. To make matters worse, perceptions of and attitudes towards fighting inequalities as unjust that Rawls saw as based on a wide consensus of citizens' "considered judgments" (Rawls, 1999, p. 17), have changed, leading to them being accepted as the justified and even necessary price to pay for economic growth and as a reward for merit. Economic arguments based on the need for incentives for raising productivity and the "trickle-down effect" have become widely accepted as if the price of economic efficiency should be disconnected from the demands of equity. Meritocracy has provided ethical arguments too. As John Roemer says, "today the most important problem for the social sciences of inequality is understanding how electorates have come to acquiesce to policies which increase inequality… and to try revealing the logic of the I would like to thank the editors of the Special Issue on Rawls for inviting me to develop ideas that I first presented in a previous paper published in French in 2016, "L'état-providence face aux inégalités et la démocratie de propriétaires: une comparaison entre Meade, Rawls, Ackerman et Piketty," Tocqueville Review, 2/2016), as well as in another paper in English in 2018: « Self-development and Social Justice ». I hope to be able to develop these ideas in a future book on property-owning democracy and its philosophical justifications.

A generation after his death in 1877, Antoine Augustin Cournot (1801-1877) rode a new wave of contemporary economic fashion to a position of near-adulation as the supreme but tragically neglected trailblazer of mathematical economics and modem price theory. In the folklore of economic thought, Cournot remains a classic case of pride and prejudice-the proud but misunderstood genius who was too far ahead of his time to be understood, much less appreciated, by his contemporaries--ce pauvre petit, a prophet without honor in his own land. The only French compatriot who carried his banner was L6on Walras, who was himself victimized by the intransigence of a narrow-minded, French, intellectual cartel. Embittered by his rejection, Cournot died before economics reaped his harvest. Mathematical economics a la Cournot became a French export to other countries: to Italy, for example, where Boccardo recognized the merits of the Recherches fairly early; to England, where Jevons, Marshall, and Edgeworth eagerly absorbed its contents and praised its founder; and to America, where its message struck sympathetic chords among economists like Irving Fisher, Henry L. Moore, and Harold Hotelling. By the 1930s, amidst the steady intrusion of mathematical methods into neoclassical economics, the belated discovery of Cournot unleashed a tide of sympathetic admiration, sobered, nonetheless, by Nichol's haunting portrait: