[2] "Stabilization, Liberalization, and Devolution", European Economy,
No. 45, December 1990.
[3] International Monetary Fund, The World Bank, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, A Study of the Soviet Economy (3 Volumes), Paris: OECD, February 1991. The main findings are summarized in The Economy of the USSR: Summary and Recommendations, Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, December 1990.
[4] It has been argued that reform was always high on some leaders' agenda but had to be promoted slyly and in piecemeal fashion against conservative resistance. See, for example, Anders Aslund, Gorbachev's Struggle for Economic Reform, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989. The present analysis is less concerned with an individual leader's psychology than with the policy choices made, for whatever reasons, by the leadership as a whole.
[5] Soviet investment trends under perestroika are analyzed in Boris Rumer, "Investment Performance in the 12th Five-Year Plan", Soviet Studies, Vol. 43, No. 3, 1991, pp. 451-472.
[6] According to the government newspaper Izvestia of November 19, 1987, meat, on average, was almost 50 percent more expensive for relatively poor families (per capita earnings of less than 50 rubles per month) than relatively rich ones (per capita earnings of more than 150 rubles per month). When differences in amounts purchased were taken into account, relatively rich families received three times more meat subsidies than relatively poor ones.
7 Hernando de Soto, The Other Path, New York: Harper & Row, 1989. The regulatory environment varies greatly by republic and sometimes even by region within republics. The Baltic republics are approaching the standards of, say, Poland or Hungary in the 1980s. The least restructuring has occurred in Central Asia, but there the "Second Economy" has long thrived with official complicity.
[8] Some would argue that enterprise property rights cannot be effectively unbundled short of a mass transfer to private ownership. Soviet experience as yet neither confirms nor refutes this. It does show--although less vividly than does, say, Polish experience--that debates about the proper forms and scope of privatization can be used to postpone needed layoffs and other aspects of unbundling.
[9] For example, it is fine to give workers shares in their enterprises, provided workers can dispose of the shares without regard to labor status.
[10] For a survey of ethnic and republican issues bearing on economic reform, see A Study of the Soviet Economy, Volume I, Appendix II-4, pp. 185-234.
[11] Presently the various fiscal authorities quarrel over not simply how the tax revenues will divided, but who will collect them, because the collectors of taxes cannot be trusted to hand them over.
[12] This aim is clearly spelled out in Abel Aganbegyan, The Economic Challenge of Perestroika, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1988. Aganbegyan was Gorbachev's chief economic advisor in the early stages of perestroika.
[13] These issues are discussed in more depth in Dennis Mueller, "Choosing a Constitution in East Europe: Lessons from Public Choice", Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 15, 1991, pp. 325-348.
[14] Robert Shiller, Maxim Boycko, and Vladimir Korobov, "Popular Attitudes Toward Free Markets: The Soviet Union and the United States Compared",
American Economic Review, Vol. 81, No. 3, June 1991, pp. 385-400