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- Title
OVERSTATEMENT OF INDUSTRIAL GROWTH IN POLAND.
- Authors
Ernst, Maurice
- Abstract
This article examines the industrial growth in Poland. It has long been a common belief in the West that Communist claims of dramatic success in industrialization are exaggerated. These claims have been based on official indexes which represent the gross value of production of industrial establishments. Western scholars have obtained considerably lower rates of growth in independent calculations with methods approximating those used in Western official indexes. The differences between official and calculated rates of growth have been attributed to various factors, including increasing coverage of industrial production in the official index; addition of new products at inflated prices; and increasing double counting in gross value of production because of growing roundaboutness in production and institutional changes. The main reason for the large excess of official growth rates over calculated growth rates is found in institutions rather than in statistical practice, in the use of production indexes in command economies as plan indicators and success criteria for managers. In pursuit of index goals managers manipulate product assortment and prices, and the result is an inflation of the index not only by Western statistical standards, but also by the standards of the Polish government itself.
- Subjects
POLAND; INDUSTRIALIZATION; ECONOMIC development; INDUSTRIES; GROWTH rate
- Publication
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1965, Vol 79, Issue 4, p623
- ISSN
0033-5533
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/1880655