Volume 5, Number 6 · October 28, 1965
Rationalizing the Russians
By Peter Wiles
The Economics of Soviet Planning
by Abram Bergson
Yale, 394 pp., $7.50
The Best Use of Economic Resources
by L.V. Kantorovich
Harvard, 349 pp., $15.00
These two books concern the 'resource allocation problem.' Granted that there ought to be economic activity at all, where precisely should we set the nation's land, labor, and capital to work? Should we make these exports or those import-substitutes? In what proportions do people want round and square buttons? Should we concentrate industry in the north or the south? Should this piece of fertile land become a city, should that semi-desert be cultivated at all? Should this hilly tract be ploughed by horses as usual, or should there be fewer tanks in the army in order that there may be tractors here too? Ought this moderately intelligent student to be a doctoral candidate, or shouldn't he be out earning his living? To what price must this machine come down before we forget our traditional manual skill and use it instead? Should we save 19 per cent or 20 per cent of the national income next year? Every economy, whether run by the market or by central command, must and does answer literally billions of such questions. But they can be answered better or worse.
Review, 2016 words
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