Planning

Abstract

‘Planning; planned: Intended, in accordance with, or achieved by, a careful plan made beforehand.’ This is the Chambers dictionary definition. Of course in this sense we all plan, whenever we think carefully of what we might do in the future. All economic decision-making relates to the future, since all transactions take time, and in the course of time some circumstances might have changed, and so plans are frequently unfulfilled, or have results different from the original intention.

This was my contribution to the New Palgrave, an encyclopaedia of economics. Had it been written today, I would have devoted some space to the very grave difficulties being encountered in the USSR and in China in implementing reforms designed to combine plan and market. It is intended that the authorities will no longer ‘issue binding instructions to subordinate management’, while inputs are to be freely purchased and not administratively allocated — though this has not yet happened. I would also have referred to the ideologically-inspired privatization even of water in Great Britain.