Economics in the Former Soviet Union

Abstract

One of the most notable, but least discussed, aspects of the halting attempts during the past six years to reform the economies of the Soviet Union, and now those of its successor states, has been the prominent role played by professional economists. Not since the mid-1920s has the Soviet political leadership felt so strongly the need to draw upon the expertise of the economics profession to help determine its course of action. In this paper, we attempt to characterize the current state of economics in the former Soviet Union, investigate the implications that the condition of Soviet economics has for reform, and suggest possible future directions for the discipline. Our information comes from four main sources: professional publications of Soviet and Western economists, published remarks by Soviet economists, personal interviews and discussions which we conducted with young Soviet economists in the summers of 1990 and 1991, and a questionnaire administered to Soviet economists and graduate students in the Soviet Union.

Teacher Training and Market Attitudes in Transitioning Economies

“…2 (Fall 2006) expect teachers specializing in economics to have more positive attitudes toward markets relative to other fields, however we anticipate the link to be mild because those who studied economics in the former Soviet Union received vastly different training from those students who studied economics in a market economy (Lopus, 1996). A typical college course in economics would include Marxist thought and the history of the Communist Party at the exclusion of basic microeconomic theory central to most Western economics courses (Alexeev, et al, 1992). University is a dummy variable equal to one if the respondent took an economics course at a university.…”

International Visibility of Balkan Economists in the Post-Socialist Era

“…The majority of socialist economists were involved in political economics, which tried to explain economic issues through a Marxist-Leninist ideology and a descriptive method, while mathematical economics was a slightly ideological but highly technical discipline that required an advanced level of mathematics and very little verbal explanation. Thus, mathematical economists gained more recognition in the West, where their articles were translated and published in journals (Brue and MacPhee 1995;Alexeev, Gaddy, and Leitzel 1992).…”

From Marx to Markets: Reform of the University Economics Curriculum in Russia

“…THE EMERGING CURRICULUM Alexeev, Gaddy, and Leitzel(1992) have characterized the Russians as "unde- Table 3 has a strikingly different look and feel from the previous courses in economics.…”