"This volume examines failed attempts at modernizing the communist economy by means of optimal planning. It traces the rise and fall of the concept in Eastern Europe and China, explaining why the mission of optimization was doomed to fail and why it may nevertheless be relaunched today"--.

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Another “Grand Illusion”— Optimizing the Central Plan
• Chapter 1 To Command or to Understand? Planning Concepts and Economic Research in Communist Bulgaria
• Chapter 2 Quantitative Economics in China From Planned Economy to Socialist Market Economy
• Chapter 3 Mathematical Economics and Central Planning Economic Research in Czechoslovakia under Communism
• Chapter 4 Theory and Political Economy of Central Planning in East Germany
• Chapter 5 Mathematical Economics Outside the Neoclassical Paradigm? Evolution of Planning Concepts in Hungary under Communism
• Chapter 6 Between Rationality and Reality Economics and Central Planning in Poland (1945–1989)
• Chapter 7 The Failure of Communist Planning A Perspective from Romania
• Chapter 8 Communism = Soviet Power + Planning Planning and Mathematical Economics in the Soviet Union
• Chapter 9 Mathematical Economics, Economic Modeling, and Planning in Yugoslavia
• Conclusion Rationality Found and Lost? In Search of a New Historical Narrative of Optimal Planning
• Index
• About the Editor and Contributors