On Some Aspects of Restructuring of the Economic Mechanism (Lessons from Implementation of the Comprehensive Experiment)

An analysis of the comprehensive experiment permits us to obtain valuable experience from the functioning of the gradually implemented economic mechanism. The results of the Experiment pointed at the necessity to restructure radically this mechanism, on the basis of restructuring of ownership relations, i.e. the strenghtening of the relations of economic lease. The orientation of the desirable changes in the system of central management, financing, planning, incentives and factor mobility is based on the increased importance of regulation of growth of the enterprises' principal capital as one of the basic elements of societal wealth, which is exploited by these economic agents with the desired rate of efficiency and which was entrusted (leased) to these agents by the society under various arrangements.

The suggested hints as to the improvement of economic mechanism proceed from the elaboration of the system of taxes and levies, which would orientate the activity of particular economic agents in the socially desirable direction, while their possibility to adopt independent decisions would be presserved. The very consistency, comprehensiveness and effectiveness of this system is basically determined by its linkages to the functioning of the interest rate. The magnitudes of this interest rate, determined by the central bank, are at the microeconomic level an expression of the societal norm of efficiency and at the macroeconomic level an expression of the relations of economic equilibrium and growth, and thus simultaneously express the relationships of economic lease.

Full Czech Version publ. In Politická ekonomie, 37, 1989, No 12, p. 1441-1452.