János Kornai, a distinguished Hungarian economist, began his adult life as an ardent believer in socialism and then became a critic of the communist political and economic system. He lost family members in the Holocaust, contributed to the ideological preparation for the 1956 Hungarian...

Hungarian economist János Kornai first used the metaphor of a single path to postsocialist transition in his earlier book, The Road to a Free Economy. The new metaphor that frames this collection of recent studies reflects a broader perspective and understanding of the complexities of...

These seven essays by the Eastern block's most important economist address and explore many of the critical social and economic issues inherent in the socialist economy. Published in Hungary in 1983, they are the firsthand observations of an insider who attempts to be as frank and impartial as...

The author addresses the question of interdisciplinary studies based on his own experience. His negative experiences are confirmed by the results of a quantitative survey demonstrating that the proportion of citations from other disciplines is very low in four examined fields (economics, law,...

The study examines the changes of the Central Eastern European region first in the context of world history. It confirms by comparative historical analyses that the transformation was indeed unique. This has been the only total transformation that took place peacefully, without violence, and at...

János Kornai is generally regarded as the world’s leading scholar on socialist economic systems. In this interview, Professor Kornai discusses the evolution of his thinking on the political economy of the socialist system, its characteristics, reform, transition and future.

The introduction explains the sense in which the concept of a paradigm, whose originator, T.S. Kuhn, was inspired by the history of the national sciences, is applied to the context of the social sciences. Here the new paradigm does not necessarily replace the old; several paradigms may function...