This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. Journal of Economic Perspectives
  4. Spring 1990
  5. Socialist Economics: The Disequilibrium School and the Shortage Economy

Journal of Economic Perspectives

ISSN 0895-3309 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7965 (Online)

Socialist Economics: The Disequilibrium School and the Shortage Economy

  • Jozef M. van Brabant
Journal of Economic Perspectives
vol. 4, no. 2, Spring 1990
(pp. 157–175)
Download Full Text PDF
(Complimentary)

Abstract

This article focuses on the debate between Richard Portes and Janos Kornai as the respective exponents of two interpretations of economic behavior in centrally planned economies: the disequilibrium school, and the theory of the shortage economy. My objective here is to elucidate for the nonspecialist the core features of the debate between the disequilibrium school and the shortage economy. Toward the end, I describe what might usefully be retained from this debate by economists who do not specialize in the study of centrally planned economies.

Citation

van Brabant, Jozef M. 1990. "Socialist Economics: The Disequilibrium School and the Shortage Economy." Journal of Economic Perspectives 4 (2): 157–175. DOI: 10.1257/jep.4.2.157

JEL Classification

  • 052 Socialist and Communist Economic Systems
  • 027 Economics of Centrally Planned Economies--General