IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/compes/v47y2005i2p296-314.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Fundamental Problem of Command: Plan and Compliance in a Partially Centralised Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Harrison

    ([1] Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. [2] Centre for Russian & East European Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK)

Abstract

When a principal gives an order to an agent and advances resources for its implementation, the temptations for the agent to shirk or steal from the principal rather than comply constitute the fundamental problem of command. Historically, partially centralised command economies enforced compliance in various ways, assisted by nesting the fundamental problem of exchange within that of command. The Soviet economy provides some relevant data. The Soviet command system combined several enforcement mechanisms in an equilibrium that shifted as agents learned and each mechanism's comparative costs and benefits changed. When the conditions for an equilibrium disappeared, the system collapsed. Comparative Economic Studies (2005) 47, 296–314. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ces.8100110

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Harrison, 2005. "The Fundamental Problem of Command: Plan and Compliance in a Partially Centralised Economy," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 47(2), pages 296-314, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:compes:v:47:y:2005:i:2:p:296-314
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ces/journal/v47/n2/pdf/8100110a.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/v47/n2/full/8100110a.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 look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Mark Harrison, 2013. "Secrecy, Fear and Transaction Costs: The Business of Soviet Forced Labour in the Early Cold War," Europe-Asia Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 65(6), pages 1112-1135.
    2. Andrei Markevich, 2007. "The Dictator’s Dilemma: to Punish or to Assist? Plan Failures and Interventions under Stalin," Working Papers w0107, New Economic School (NES).
    3. Natalia A. Sadovnikova & Valery L. Abramov & Andrey A. Ogryzov & Olga A. Makhova, 2020. "Clean Energy in the EAEU in the Context of Sustainable Development: Compliance and Prospects," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 10(5), pages 272-280.
    4. Péter Földvári & Bas van Leeuwen & Dmitry Didenko, 2015. "Capital formation and economic growth under central planning and transition: A theoretical and empirical analysis, ca. 1920–2008," Acta Oeconomica, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 65(1), pages 27-50, March.

    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:47:y:2005:i:2:p:296-314. 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.