The East German Economy

The contributors to this volume consider the economic history of East Germany within its broader political, cultural and social contexts.

Originally published in 1987, this book brings together leading authorities from Germany and the USA who analyze how the East German economy actually operated - planning and management, pricing, investment and innovation, the financial system, agriculture and foreign trade (including the special concessions granted by the then Federal Republic of Germany). The volume is an insightful study of one of the least studied and most successful of socialist economies.

The establishment of the Communist social model in one part of Germany was a result of international postwar developments, of the Cold War waged by East and West, and of the resultant partition of Germany. As the author argues, the GDR's 'new' society was deliberately conceived as a counter-model to the liberal and marketregulated system. Although the hopes connected with this alternative system turned out to be misplaced and the planned economy may be thoroughly discredited today, it is important to understand the context in which it developed and failed. This study, a bestseller in its German version, offers an in-depth exploration of the GDR economy's starting conditions and the obstacles to growth it confronted during the consolidation phase. These factors, however, were not decisive in the GDR's lack of growth compared to that of the Federal Republic. As this study convincingly shows, it was the economic model that led to failure.

This book is an exploration of the economic history of the German Democratic Republic, with an emphasis upon its confrontation by and contribution towards economic and military competition on the world stage. Beginning with an analysis of the Soviet bloc as a state-capitalist formation, the GDR's economic history is charted, with detailed examinations of the challenges to Soviet-style autarky that were posed by the globalising world market, as well as of GDR policymakers' attempts to use Western imports and credits as a 'whip' to spur growth. The book's central section consists of an exploration of the ambivalent attitudes of East German policymakers and industrialists towards their West German counterparts in the 1980s, as the whip was transformed into an ever-tightening noose of debt. Here, a prodigious range of secondary sources as well as hitherto unpublished documents from the archives of the old regime are drawn upon to document the means by which relative economic decline and dependency upon Western institutions came to constrain the options available to the East German nomenklatura. Finally, this study analyses the political economy of the 1989 revolution and unification and of post-unification Eastern Germany.

Jeffrey Kopstein offers the first comprehensive study of East German economic policy over the course of the state's forty-year history. Analyzing both the making of economic policy at the national level and the implementation of specific policies on the shop floor, he provides new and essential background to the revolution of 1989. In particular, he shows how decisions made at critical junctures in East Germany's history led to a pattern of economic decline and worker dissatisfaction that contributed to eventual political collapse. East Germany was generally considered to have the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc, but Kopstein explores what prevented the country's leaders from responding effectively to pressing economic problems. He depicts a regime caught between the demands of a disaffected working class whose support was crucial to continued political stability, an intractable bureaucracy, an intolerant but surprisingly weak Soviet patron state, and a harsh international economic climate. Rather than pushing for genuine economic change, the East German Communist Party retreated into what Kopstein calls a 'campaign economy' in which an endless series of production campaigns was used to squeeze greater output from an inherently inefficient economic system. Originally published in 1996. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Für diese Untersuchung wurde dem Autor am 13. 9. 2007 der René Kuczynski-Preis für herausragende Publikationen auf dem Gebiet der Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte verliehen. Der Autor definiert die Wirtschaftsleistung Ostdeutschlands im Vergleich zu Westdeutschland neu. Dazu zieht er in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur vorliegende Berechnungen und eigene Schätzungen heran. Zum einen bestimmt er die Wirtschaftsleistung für die Stichjahre 1936 und 1954 neu, um den Einfluss der Startbedingungen abschätzen zu können. Außerdem berechnet er die Produktion der Industrie und ihrer Branchen auf Basis physischer Angaben für den Zeitraum 1936-1991 sowie darauf aufbauend das gesamte Bruttoinlandsprodukt Ostdeutschlands neu. Die erzielten Ergebnisse sind innovativ und erweitern unser Wissen über Niveau und Entwicklung der Wirtschaft auf dem Gebiet der DDR. Es handelt sich um die derzeit beste, breiteste, fundierteste Berechnung der Wirtschaftsentwicklung der DDR, und zwar im Vergleich mit Westdeutschland.

"It is, perhaps, worth stressing that economic problems arise always and only in consequence of change. So long as things continue as before, or at least as they were expected to, there arise no new problems requiring a decision, no need to form a plan. " (Hayek, 1945, p. 523) This book is based on my research for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy which I received from Lancaster University, England in the second half of 1997. It is an analysis of the structural transformation of the economic system in East Germany and the behavioural relations these changes imply. The approach of institutionalised transformation (not the least by the creation of the Treuhandanstalt) is examined with a theory-based framework which is derived from system-theoretical, evolutionary and constitutional-ethical considerations as well as from the newly developed adjustment model which has been constructed as a dynamic transformation approach. A relationship between norm changes, the new institutional framework of the economic system and the compatibility of the latter with changes of the remaining partial societal systems is recognised. Rigidity factors in the system's flexibility to react as well as the adjustment of economic behaviour to structural changes are analysed. The "marginal product of system change" is defined (section 2. 8. 2).