tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813382491463594994.post3471337005776892465..comments2018-12-06T03:22:19.422-08:00Comments on Café de la Régence: Aslund on the Post-Soviet TransitionAndrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09399125024366524125noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813382491463594994.post-24514205387009014702016-06-28T15:33:02.709-07:002016-06-28T15:33:02.709-07:00You managed to use three ways of referring to me i...You managed to use three ways of referring to me in a single post! :)<br /><br />"It's commonly believed - though I don't know if José himself would accept this - that Soviet economies had a persistent problem with over-reporting of output"<br />I remember reading about this in János Kornai's Socialist System, for the same reason you point out. <br />To this we have to add that the CIA apparently over-reported Soviet GDP due to differences in quality and problems with adjusting through exchange rates. But there are people who claim the CIA did fine. Anyway, I would say that the bias in official statistics regarding quantities produced decreased as the years passed, and possibly after 1980 it should have been small. Perhaps 'small' is compatible with 5%. <br /><br />In the early years, the situation was so bad that the distortions introduced weren't even consistent between the years, so it wasn't possible to get real *growth rates* from official data. <br /><br />From Maddison, seemingly GDP in the 1989-1994 period fell by 43%, which seems incredible. In 1991 it fell by 7%. So Aslund's recalculations are quite interesting, and for some reason they haven't been taken into account by the Maddison gang at Groningen. When I read the book I'll try to reconcile everything. Probably it's a matter of doing a similar exercise to the one Igor Birman did. Rather than comparing official definitions (spending vs spending), adjust it to make the comparison more meaningful.<br /><br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com