Stabilisation and Reform Sequencing in the Soviet Economy

This paper reviews the progress of Soviet economic reform and investigates the reasons for its apparent lack of success. It is argued that Soviet economic reform has failed to complete itself, on a large enough scale and in the correct sequence. The missing steps are : economic stabilisation ; the severance of enterprise links with central government bodies, the abolition of the monopoly power of large enterprises and their associations, the guarantee of the strictly residual nature of enterprise income. The paper proposes a tentative sequencing of policies and institutional changes, giving primacy to domestic stabilisation