276/2016 Tamás Vonyó and Alexander Klein

We present revised growth accounts for three socialist economies between 1950 and 1989. Government statistics reported distorted measures for both the rate and trajectory of productivity growth in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. Researchers have benefited from revised output data, but continued to use official statistics on capital input, or estimated capital stock from official investment data. Investment levels and rates of capital accumulations were, in fact, much lower than officially claimed and over-reporting worsened over time. Sluggish factor accumulation, specifically declining equipment investment and labour input, contributed much more to the socialist growth failure of the 1980s than previously thought.

Economic History

External Research Associate

The Economic History Review

https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12734