P20 - Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies: GeneralReturn

The article deals with the fate of the first governor of the Czechoslovak Central Bank after World War II. It analyses his economic thinking and the sources that influenced it. The text sees him as deeply rooted in non-liberal Central European tradition but with a strong impact of Anglo-Saxon economics of the interwar period. The article also explores his contribution to the transition of the Czechoslovak economy to Soviet-type central planning and proves the hypothesis that his influence was much smaller than existing literature indicates.

The authors critically discuss some of the theses of Svetozar Pejovich from his article On the Privatization of "Stolen Goods" in Central and Eastern Europe. The Independent Review, v. X, N. 2, Fall 2005, s. 209-229. ISSN 1086- 653. Their polemic can be summarized as follows: (1) According to Pejovich, the "carriers of the institutional restructuring" relied solely on the neo-classical ("text-book") economics. The authors reply that at least in their country also the New Institutional School, Austrian Economics and Public Choice were well known and broadly applied. (2) Pejovich seems to confuse privatization of an individual enterprise with the privatization of the society as a whole, i.e. the actual task of the governments. While the former may seek for an optimal owner, the latter is assigned "only" to launch the initial market for ownership rights. (3) Pejovich seems to believe that governments could have controlled the exact sequencing of their transformation steps and measures. By contrast, the authors stress the extreme spontaneity of the real-life developments and absurdity of the attempts to postpone, e.g., privatization - freeze it till some optimal legal frame emerges and-or is installed. (4) As to the Pejovich's de-communisation, the authors speculate that he may have generalized the Yugoslav experience, where the communists could have shared their Party's titoistic ideology. Contrariwise, the membership of a typical Czech communist was never based on the ideology and thus represented nothing about his/her post-communist concepts. (5) As to the Pejovich's own proposal "how to do it", the authors stress, again, its unrealistic nature, as what the proposal requires in fact is nothing less than to (a) accurately valuate thousands of state-owned enterprises, (b) rationally restructure them physically and financially, (c) offer and sell them at a correct price and (d) fairly divide the proceeds among its citizens. To the authors of this polemic, a task of this magnitude is beyond capacity of anybody, not to mention governments, least of all the post-communist ones.

Karel Kouba belongs among the most prominent Czech economists of the second half of the 20th century. The paper analyzes his major contribution to the Czech economic thought in the context of economic reforms of the Prague Spring of 1968 and of economic transition in 1990s. In the communist era special focus is devoted to the theory of growth in the socialist economies, compatibility of plan and market and his inclusion of individual motivations into decision-making of agents within the centrally planned economy. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, K. Kouba showed the importance of microeconomic relations for the macrostability and the relevance of institutional economy for explaining the processes during the transition period. Kouba's story has also a more general message. It shows how the biggest talents were treated during the communist era in Czechoslovakia and which dilemmas they had to face.