Improving Research on Former Soviet and Other Historically Planned Economies: Summary of a Planning Meeting (1992)

present obstacles to the development of labor markets, i.e. housing or other benefits that are tied to particular jobs, differential access to child care or health benefits. Alternatively, research on this topic could focus on differentials in the development of labor markets between the public and private sectors. As an example, in certain Eastern European states wages were allowed-to rise in the private sector, but-not in the public, thereby providing important incentives for labor to shift from one sector to the other.

Housing. Comparative, descriptive research could focus on the question of what is happening to housing. Are rights of use being transformed into rights of ownership and exchange? Can housing be bought and sold, inherited, sublet? How have the changes so far introduced affected other aspects of economic behavior such as labor mobility? Are there relevant examples from any of the East European states?

Useful research could also compare the relative success of transitions in economies that have adopted rapid versus gradual programs of reform. Comparative analysis could focus on such critical economic underpinnings of political stability as consumer welfare, food production or unemployment statistics, or on the feedbacks that determine whether institutional changes persist.

Rather than attempting to further operationalize the conceptual framework and/or specify the details of any particular research avenue, the panel chose to leave the framework as a sketch so as to provide the broadest latitude for individual researchers to select and develop their own particular topics, approaches and methodologies.

The panel’s framework allows for a very wide range of potential research that may be of interest to private foundations as well as public agencies. The public agency sponsoring the panel’s work intends to utilize this research framework to request grant and

contract proposals from the research community. The panel will reconvene to review and rank the proposals.

The Panel considers that in order to be competitive, research proposals should meet several of the following criteria:

1. Importance. The research addresses fundamental issues relating to the nature, speed, direction and magnitude of change in historically planned economies. Studies that seem likely to and shed light and generate empirical data on the following patterns of behavior would qualify under this criterion:

   • Behaviors that have a potentially high impact on larger economic trends such as privatization or marketization. For example, is the response to the institutional change fostering change in the direction of further marketization, or is it promoting efforts to develop new forms of market management? What does this research tell us about the relation between those segments of the evolving system(s) that are undergoing change and those segments that are effectively resisting change, or provoking either the reintroduction of old controls or the elaboration of new ones?

   • Behaviors that result in major shifts in patterns of resource ownership or allocation, for example, from the public to the private sector or from military to civilian production;

   • Behaviors that have multiple impacts, for example, changes in the banking system might have also important effects on foreign investment and changes in the asset portfolios of households and enterprises; and

   • Behaviors that play a significant role in determining whether the transition will be smooth or turbulent and which may serve as predictors of potential political instability.

2. Improving Theory and Measurement. The research helps develop theoretical tools and empirically based indicators that will facilitate future studies of economic transitions in general and thereby allow for more accurate predictions of long term economic developments in HPEs in particular. The research program should be characterized by methodological pluralism.

3. Adding to Existing Knowledge. The research has a high probability of making a contribution to knowledge about economies in transition or HPEs in particular. It may deal with an issue about which relatively little is known or one about which the available knowledge is highly uncertain. However, there should be a strong probability of a useful result.

4. Improving Data. The research helps raise the quality of data on important variables relevant to economic transitions or HPEs, utilizes newly available sources of data and demonstrates their utility for the analysis proposed, or provides data on important variables for which good measures do not yet exist.

5. Amenability to Research. Some questions lend themselves more readily to economic analysis because of the existence of comparable cases, the ease of operationalizing key variables, or the possibility of access to reliable data sources.

6. Balance. Not all projects should focus on the same or similar sets of issues.

7. Immediacy. Studies should focus on issues likely to confront policy-makers during the next few years, particularly those likely to produce near term, albeit preliminary findings.