Economic Efficiency and the Reform Potential of the Soviet Economy

苏联和西方学者对苏联经济体系的效率潜力问题给予了越来越多的关注。长期以来，人们一直认为和/或知道苏联分配、生产和分配安排妨碍效率，但对这些现象进行严格分类、分析和衡量的尝试是最近才有的。已经完成了大量有价值的工作，但仍有许多工作要做。这一研究项目的目的是继续过去与莫斯科苏联科学院中央经济和数学研究所的合作者的合作。它代表着五年研究议程的第二年(第二阶段)，苏联研究团队也致力于此。这一阶段包括四个主要的分析方向：(1)完成一本题为《苏联和美国的经济效率理论和测量》的专著；(2)将效率文献中的不同部分吸收为一份关于苏联经济效率分析和测量的现状报告；(3)通过扩展现有的理论和经验分析来评估苏联经济体系的效率潜力；以及(4)从体系效率潜力的角度来评估戈尔巴乔夫正在进行的改革的影响。本项目正在开发和应用的方法论在经济学上具有广泛的适用性。这种合作努力在这一领域的规模是独一无二的，它应该会提供一幅关于新兴苏联经济安排的更好的正式图景，同时让一些有影响力的苏联经济学家了解西方最先进的分析。

Soviet and Western scholars have been devoting increasing attention to the question of the efficiency potential of the Soviet economic system. It has long been thought and/or known that that Soviet allocational, productive and distributive arrangements impede efficiency, but attempts to rigorously classify, analyze and measure these phenomena are of more recent origin. A good deal of valuable work has been accomplished, but much remains to be done. The purpose of this research project is to continue past joint work with collaborators at the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (TsEMI) in Moscow. It represents the second year (Phase II) of a five-year research agenda, to which the Soviet research team also is committed. The current Phase involves four main directions of analysis: (1) to complete a monograph entitled Theory and Measurement of Economic Efficiency in the Soviet Union and the United States; (2) to assimilate the disparate strands of the efficiency literature into a status report on the analysis and measurement of Soviet economic efficiency; (3) to assess the efficiency potential of the Soviet economic system by extending existing theoretical and empirical analyses; and (4) to evaluate the implications of Gorbachev's unfolding reforms from the standpoint of the efficiency potential of the system. The methodology being developed and applied in this project has broad applicability in economics. The collaborative effort, unique for its scale in this area, should provide a better formal picture of the emerging Soviet economic arrangements, at the same time that it acquaints some influential Soviet economists with state-of-the-art Western analysis.