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Plenary Session On the final afternoon of the meeting a plenary session was held to enable the participants to both report on their deliberations and to receive comments and feedback from a larger group of economic specialists working in related areas in government agencies, the academic community, and private research organizations. Lawrence Klein introduced the session with an extended commentary on the issues investigated at the meeting and a presentation of his own conclusions concerning future research efforts. Klein argued that American Sovietologists had done a better job of estimating the size of the Soviet economy than anyone else, including the Soviets themselves. He noted that Soviet statistics offer little more information to analysts than is characteristic of many LDCs, that the economy in question has been in chronic disequilibrium throughout the postwar period, and that a sizable amount of production and trade takes place in the second economy. Klein contended that while everyone had been wrong to a certain extent, on the whole American experts had presented policy makers, specialists, and the larger public with as accurate a picture of the Soviet economy as the limited data could provide. He also suggested that recent changes in the Soviet system and the Soviets' avowed interest in par- ticipating in various international organizations indicated that analysts might be able to go beyond the short cuts of the AFC method in the future. In closing, Klein called for the development of an integrated accounting system for the Soviet economy and a full scale study to elucidate the complex and interconnected methodological issues raised at this meeting. 20
