The Grand Experiment of Communism: Discovering the Trade-off between Equality and Efficiency (Previously titled: Cultural Transmission and the Pendulum of Economic Systems: The Case of Communism)
| dc.creator | Farvaque, Etienne | |
| dc.creator | Mihailov, Alexander | |
| dc.creator | Naghavi, Alireza | |
| dc.date | 2017-04-01T18:08:45Z | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-09T05:48:39Z | |
| dc.description | This paper aims to explain the rise and fall of communism by exploring the interplay between economic incentives and social preferences transmitted by ideology. We introduce inequality-averse and inefficiency-averse agents and analyze their conflict through the interaction between leaders with economic power and followers with ideological determination. The socioeconomic dynamics of our model generate a pendulum-like switch from markets to a centrally-planned economy abolishing private ownership, and back to restoring market incentives. The grand experiment of communism is thus characterized to have led to the discovery of a trade-o¤ between equality and efficiency at the scale of alternative economic systems. While our focus is on the long-run transitions from capitalism to communism and back observed in the course of the 20-th century, the model also derives conditions under which each of the systems can remain stable. | |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.22004/ag.econ.116909 | |
| dc.identifier | https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/116909/files/NDL2011-070RevApril%202013.pdf | |
| dc.identifier | http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/116909 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/568645 | |
| dc.language | eng | |
| dc.publisher | ||
| dc.source | http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/116909 | |
| dc.title | The Grand Experiment of Communism: Discovering the Trade-off between Equality and Efficiency (Previously titled: Cultural Transmission and the Pendulum of Economic Systems: The Case of Communism) | |
| dc.type | Text |