IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/compes/v53y2011i4p597-620.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rent-Seeking, Hierarchy and Centralization: Why the Soviet Union Collapsed So Fast and What it Means for Market Economies

Author

Listed:
  • Guinevere Liberty Nell

    (Warwick University, 17 Crossleigh Court, 407B New Cross Road, New Cross, London SE14 6LA, UK)

Abstract

Opening of the archives confirmed that the Soviet Union was a hierarchical economy driven by planning, not a rent-seeking society. Rent-seeking could not govern the classical socialist society because lower-level officials could not trust their superiors to collaborate. Individual incentives would have favored widespread rent-seeking in the absence of punishment, therefore loosening of control during perestroika infused the system with rent-seeking and triggered the collapse of the planned economy. Rent-seeking drives decentralization of a hierarchical economy but centralization of a free economy, suggesting a tipping point between the two systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Guinevere Liberty Nell, 2011. "Rent-Seeking, Hierarchy and Centralization: Why the Soviet Union Collapsed So Fast and What it Means for Market Economies," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 53(4), pages 597-620, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:compes:v:53:y:2011:i:4:p:597-620
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ces/journal/v53/n4/pdf/ces201117a.pdf
    File Function: Link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ces/journal/v53/n4/full/ces201117a.html
    File Function: Link to full text HTML
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Guinevere Nell, 2014. "The Alchemy of the Can Opener: How an Austrian Economist Found Himself Supporting Dictatorial Imposition of a Liberal Order," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(3), pages 349-357, July.
    2. Byung‐Yeon Kim & Yoshisada Shida, 2017. "Shortages and the informal economy in the Soviet republics, 1965–89," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1346-1374, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:compes:v:53:y:2011:i:4:p:597-620. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.