Economic and Social Changes: Facts, Trends, Forecast (Nov 2019)
State Strategic Planning Experience in the USSR in Theoretical and Empirical Studies
Abstract
In recent years, the Russian Federation has been forming a strategic planning system, which exists in many countries with market economics. However, success of its implementation is assessed critically in scientific literature. This is where the goal of this article becomes relevant – expansion of theoretical and methodological framework, including instruments of new institutional economic history for studying empirical sources concerning institutional practices of USSR centralized planning from the perspective of needs of the RF strategic planning economics system. The greatest attention to this problem is paid in the development and institutional economics, which are interconnected with each other. The novelty of the research consists in the fact that we put forward our own methodological questions in the context of our original understanding of trends of development economics’ evolution on the basis of our interpretation of studies which explored Soviet experience of centralized planning; formulation of working hypothesis for further empirical studies and their theoretical generalization. We use historical genetic and problematic approaches, general logical methods and techniques – system approach, generalization, analysis and synthesis. We compare individual concepts in the sphere of development economics with empirical studies. We find out that the slowdown of USSR economic dynamics urged development economics theorists to shift their focus from macroeconomics’ modeling of production factors to the analysis of the institutional environment features. The approach to centralized planning as a key instrument of overcoming “traps of underdevelopment” (“market failures”) was substituted with understanding of transactional costs connected with it (“state failures”). It was stated that important issues, such as cooperation between institutions of scientific knowledge and state’s management of economics, were not properly analyzed. The conclusion was drawn that the research on empirical sources, concerning institutions of soviet planning, using theoretical and methodological instruments of development economics, enriched with concepts of institutional economics, will contribute to the formation of new theory of national and regional economics’ planning in the paradigm of post-Soviet institutionalism
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