Historically planned economies : A guide to the data.

Most economies with a legacy of central planning are changing in fundamental ways. With the rapid economic, social, and political changes in these economies an update of the first edition of Historically Planned Economies (HPEs): A Guide to the Data, has become necessary. In addition to presenting data for two additional years, this edition features 17 new countries: the 15 states of the former Soviet Union and the Czech and Slovak republics. During the past two years all of these new states became members of the World Bank, and the Bank's data base on this region has been considerably expanded. As a result, this new edition contains mainly World Bank data, replacing the former external sources, authors' series, and other comparator estimates. While retaining the first edition's discussions on the role of central planning and its legacy on the statistical systems, this edition gives a greater emphasis to the statistical issues during transition. This report introduces the systemic and statistical issues affecting HPE data in global comparisons. It presents the model of traditional central planning to give the context for the main statistical issues affecting comparisons of historical and recent data. It includes data tables on social and economic topics. The global tables show internationally comparable data by topic for intertemporal and cross-country analysis. The report explains and documents the differences between the national accounts conventions of the System of National Accounts and the Material Product System and draws attention to the problems of conversion of national data from local currencies to dollars. Finally, technical notes cover the basic data presented and explain the standard sources and methods for compiling data, focusing on statistical approaches common to most HPEs.

Description based on print version record.