IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jeclit/v55y2017i1p191-208.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Capitalism and Socialism: A Review of Kornai's Dynamism, Rivalry, and the Surplus Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Chenggang Xu

Abstract

Understanding the nature of capitalism has been a central theme of economics. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the global financial crisis spurred the reemergence of the political economy as a new frontier and the revival of interest in the nature of capitalism. Janos Kornai's book Dynamism, Rivalry, and the Surplus Economy: Two Essays on the Nature of Capitalism fills an important intellectual gap in understanding the dynamic nature of capitalism by comparing it with its mirror image, socialism. To further develop the themes contained in the book, serious challenges are posed theoretically and empirically, as well as in subjects, such as hybrid capitalism.

Suggested Citation

  • Chenggang Xu, 2017. "Capitalism and Socialism: A Review of Kornai's Dynamism, Rivalry, and the Surplus Economy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(1), pages 191-208, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:jeclit:v:55:y:2017:i:1:p:191-208
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/jel.20151282
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.20151282
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=AMiviXXp0uTjDjS60j2N9iqCJYKEBgji
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Diamond, P. A. & Maskin, Eric, 1981. "An equilibrium analysis of search and breach of contract II. A non-steady state example," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 165-195, October.
    2. Eric Maskin, 2004. "The Unity of Auction Theory: Paul Milgrom's Masterclass," Economics Working Papers 0044, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science.
    3. Mortensen, Dale & Pissarides, Christopher, 2011. "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 1, pages 1-19.
    4. Stigler, George J., 2011. "Economics of Information," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 5, pages 35-49.
    5. Oskar Lange, 1937. "On the Economic Theory of Socialism: Part Two," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 4(2), pages 123-142.
    6. Eric Maskin, 2004. "The Unity of Auction Theory: Milgrom's Masterclass," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(4), pages 1102-1115, December.
    7. Janos Kornai, 2008. "By Force of Thought: Irregular Memoirs of an Intellectual Journey," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262612240, April.
    8. M. Dewatripont & E. Maskin, 1995. "Credit and Efficiency in Centralized and Decentralized Economies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(4), pages 541-555.
    9. Arrow, Kenneth J, 1974. "General Economic Equilibrium: Purpose, Analytic Techniques, Collective Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(3), pages 253-272, June.
    10. Diamond, Peter A, 1982. "Aggregate Demand Management in Search Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(5), pages 881-894, October.
    11. Kornai, J, 1979. "Resource-Constrained versus Demand-Constrained Systems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(4), pages 801-819, July.
    12. Wenfang TANG & Dong Erico YU, 2015. "Public Policy Satisfaction in Urban China," East Asian Policy (EAP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 7(02), pages 63-77, April.
    13. János Kornai, 2014. "The soft budget constraint," Acta Oeconomica, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 64(supplemen), pages 25-79, November.
    14. Acemoglu, Daron, 1995. "Reward structures and the allocation of talent," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 17-33, January.
    15. Kornai, Janos, 2013. "Dynamism, Rivalry, and the Surplus Economy: Two Essays on the Nature of Capitalism," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199334766.
    16. Kornai, Janos, 1990. "The Affinity between Ownership Forms and Coordination Mechanisms: The Common Experience of Reform in Socialist Countries," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 131-147, Summer.
    17. Peter A. Diamond & Eric Maskin, 1979. "An Equilibrium Analysis of Search and Breach of Contract, I: Steady States," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 282-316, Spring.
    18. Yingyi Qian & Chenggang Xu, 1998. "Innovation and Bureaucracy Under Soft and Hard Budget Constraints," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 65(1), pages 151-164.
    19. Nicholas R. Lardy, 2008. "Financial Repression in China," Policy Briefs PB08-8, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    20. Kornai, Janos, 1992. "The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198287766.
    21. North,Douglass C. & Wallis,John Joseph & Weingast,Barry R., 2013. "Violence and Social Orders," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107646995.
    22. Kornai, Janos, 1986. "The Hungarian Reform Process: Visions, Hopes, and Reality," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 24(4), pages 1687-1737, December.
    23. repec:ucp:bkecon:9780226320625 is not listed on IDEAS
    24. Oskar Lange, 1936. "On the Economic Theory of Socialism," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 4(1), pages 53-71.
    25. Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro & Wright, Randall, 1993. "A Search-Theoretic Approach to Monetary Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 63-77, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Peter J. Boettke & Rosolino A. Candela & Peter J. Jacobsen, 2023. "Economic calculation and transaction costs: The case of the airline oversales auction system," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(3), pages 708-731, January.
    2. Sam-Kee Cheng, 2020. "Primitive Socialist Accumulation in China: An Alternative View on the Anomalies of Chinese “Capitalismâ€," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(4), pages 693-715, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xu, Cheng-Gang, 2017. "Capitalism and Socialism: Review of Kornai’s Dynamism, Rivalry, and the Surplus Economy," CEPR Discussion Papers 11866, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2021. "Socialism and Kornai’s revolutionary perspective," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 187(1), pages 37-54, April.
    3. Xu, Cheng-Gang & Guo, Di & Huang, Haizhou & Jiang, Kun, 2020. "Disruptive Innovation and R&D Ownership Structures of the Firm," CEPR Discussion Papers 14861, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Danthine, Samuel & De Vroey, Michel, 2017. "The Integration Of Search In Macroeconomics: Two Alternative Paths," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(4), pages 523-548, December.
    5. Di Guo & Haizhou Huang & Kun Jiang & Chenggang Xu, 2021. "Disruptive innovation and R&D ownership structures," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 187(1), pages 143-163, April.
    6. Nobuhiro Kiyotaki & Ricardo Lagos, 2007. "A Model of Job and Worker Flows," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(5), pages 770-819, October.
    7. Peter Diamond, 2011. "Unemployment, Vacancies, Wages," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1045-1072, June.
    8. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2021. "Introduction: a special issue in honoring Janos Kornai," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 187(1), pages 1-13, April.
    9. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2022. "In Janos Kornai’s memory," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 190(3), pages 265-271, March.
    10. Athreya, Kartik B., 2014. "Big Ideas in Macroeconomics: A Nontechnical View," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262019736, April.
    11. Matteo Richiardi, 2004. "A Search Model Of Unemployment And Firm Dynamics," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 7(02), pages 203-221.
    12. Tong, Jian & Xu, Cheng-Gang, 2004. "Financial institutions and the wealth of nations: tales of development," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24682, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Justin Yifu Lin, 2007. "Development and Transition : Idea, Strategy, and Viability," Development Economics Working Papers 22709, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    14. Richard Rogerson & Robert Shimer & Randall Wright, 2004. "Search-Theoretic Models of the Labor Market-A Survey," NBER Working Papers 10655, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Vahabi,Mehrdad, 2019. "The Political Economy of Predation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107591370.
    16. Peter J. Boettke & Rosolino A. Candela, 2021. "János Kornai, the Austrians, and the political and economic analysis of socialism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 187(1), pages 85-97, April.
    17. Lisi, Gaetano, 2011. "Matching Models of Equilibrium Unemployment: An Overview," MPRA Paper 30191, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Duranton, Gilles & Haniotis, Toni, 2004. "A comparison between economic systems with an application to transition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(9-10), pages 2125-2157, August.
    19. Vahabi, Mehrdad, 2011. "Soft budget constraint and the parastatal sector," MPRA Paper 37926, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Pissarides, Christopher A., 2015. "Dale Mortensen: An appreciation," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 1-6.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L32 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Public Enterprises; Public-Private Enterprises
    • P12 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Enterprises
    • P14 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Property Rights
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • P26 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Property Rights
    • P31 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Socialist Enterprises and Their Transitions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:jeclit:v:55:y:2017:i:1:p:191-208. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.