Amazon.com description: Product Description: First published as a second edition in 1989, Socialist Planning presented a fully revised and updated edition of a book that had established itself as the standard introductory text on the economics of socialist planning. It was intended to provide the reader with a grasp of the theoretical ideas and empirical knowledge that explain the historical experience of socialist planning, problems in the state socialist countries of the late eighties, and the comparative efficiency of socialist planning and market capitalism. While the structure of the second edition remained basically unchanged each chapter incorporated empirical evidence of the changes that took place since the mid-seventies, along with the ideological developments related to these changes. The book will remain valuable, primarily for its historical interest, but also for its combination of theory and practice, the analytical perspective and careful selection of material, and in the attention paid to analyses by politicians and economists from the socialist countries themselves.