Performance and Efficiency in the USSR: New Measurements and the Bergson Legacy

November 23 - 24, 2003
Davis Center

Sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University & The International Economics Program, University of Houston.

For more information please contact Robert Price (rfprice@fas.harvard.edu;617-495-8900).

Sunday, November 23,
Session 1: New Studies of Soviet "Working Arrangements": From Archival Studies, 3:00 - 5:30 PMDavis Center, Room 3
Chair: Marshall I. Goldman (Wellesley College)

Andrei Markevich and Paul Gregory (Moscow University and University of Houston),

“Soviet Planning: Theory vs. Practice”

A.K. Sokolov (Moscow),
“The Military-Industrial Complex”

Leonid Borodkin and Simon Ertz (Moscow and Berlin),
"The Labor Economics of the Soviet Gulag”

Eugenia Belova (Yale),
“Contract Enforcement in the Soviet Command Economy”

Commentator: Yoshiko Herrera (Harvard University), Boris Rumer (Davis Center, Harvard University)

Session 2: Two New Views of the Soviet Economic System and its Performance, 7:45 – 9:00 PM, Davis Center, Room 3
Chair: Robert Stuart (Rutgers University)

Robert Allen (Oxford University),
“From Farm to Factory: Rethinking Soviet Industrialization”

Paul Gregory (University of Houston),
“The Political Economy of Stalinism”

Commentators: Robert Campbell (Indiana University), Stefan Hedlund (Uppsala University), Martin Weitzman (Harvard University)

Monday, November 24, Davis Center
Session 3: Soviet Growth: Did Bergson Get it Right? 9:00 - 11:15 AM
Davis Center, Room 3 Chair: Paul Gregory (University of Houston)

Valentin Kudrow (Moscow), Soviet Growth in Russian Perspective, The Bergson Legacy

Steven Rosefielde (University of North Carolina), "Tea Leaves & Productivity"

Irwin Collier (Free University Berlin), "Utility Based Measures of Welfare"

Elizabeth Brainerd (Williams College), “Reassessing the Standard of Living in the Soviet Union: An Analysis Using Archival and Antropometric Data”

Commentators: Yasushi Toda (University of Florida), Gur Ofer (Hebrew University)

Session 4: The Political Economy of the Soviet System and its Collapse 12:15 - 2:30 PM Davis Center, Room 3
Chair: Tim Colton (Harvard University)

Mark Harrison (University of Warwick), “Command and Collapse: the Fundamental Problem of Command in a Partially Centralized Economy”

Valery Lazarev (Yale), "Political Dynamics & Economic Development in the Soviet Union: The 1930’s through 1991"

Mark Kramer (Davis Center, Harvard University), “Russia and the Disintegration of the Soviet Financial System”

Commentators: Marshall Goldman (Wellesley College), David Lane (Cambridge University), Carol Leonard (Oxford)

Bergson Memorial Service, Memorial Church, Harvard Yard 3:00 – 4:00 PM

Reception: Harvard Faculty Club, 20 Quincy St., with family, friends, conference participants