Overcentralization in Economic Administration: A Critical Analysis Based on Experience in Hungarian Light Industry

Overcentralization in Economic Administration (Oxford, 1959) was the first book written by an Eastern European and published in the West that openly criticized socialist central planning. In this work the distinguished economist János Kornai begins a lifelong study of the economic organization of centrally planned economies.

Professor Kornai's aim in this book was to observe the reality of the working socialist system, and to draw conclusions that were not distorted by the laws of Marxist p...