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ON THE HISTORY OF ECONOMICS

AT THE INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC STUDIES, CHARLES UNIVERSITY

Vladimír Benáček

* June 1st 1990   and   * June 1st 1993

Even though IES is relatively young, established provisionally as the Department of Economics on the 1st June 1990, its roots reach further back to the so-called "central planning" under totalitarian rule. How come, you may ask, are you proud of the shameful communist past? Not at all! To the contrary, we are proud of the pro-Western past of our first teachers and their hands-on expertise. Thus, they were ready to propose Western economics curricula, backed by their own unique research, as early as January 1990, mere six weeks after the fall of Communism, as the first university in the country. Actually, the history of IES could serve as an exceptional case study of how the communist system functioned, including its genetic Kafkaesque absurdities, such as running a system of 24 integrated multisectoral neoclassical econometric models in disguise of a "system supporting the decisions of central planning", which the hand-picked connived planners had to formally approve every year but, in practice, fended off the Ministry as much as they could. Their reason was simple: the models required at least some free pricing, some markets and some entrepreneurship, which the planning lacked. Moreover, there were many more such absurdities.

Let us therefore go step by step from the starting point of the Prague Spring of 1968, following the underpinning references. How did we come to have teachers who were fully proficient in neoclassical and institutional economics and econometrics when Communism had blacklisted and purged these topics for 41 years? The key is that they came from the Academy of Sciences—Economic Institute (EI) and/or its Economic-Mathematical Laboratory (EML). Both institutions rescued a highly anomalous creative microclimate that was very different from the dull totalitarian institutions.

In 1968, the EI staff of 120 was full of researchers who believed that Marxism was merely an ideological illusion unable to compete with axiomatic and empirical economics in explanatory power. They were also aided by the de-Stalinization years of 1962-68, when contacts with the West and studies there were gradually allowed. Key figures like Karel Kouba, Luděk Urban, Oldřich Kýn, Luděk Rychetník, Luboš Hejl, Bohuslav Sekerka, Josef Goldmann, Jiří Skolka, Ota Šik, Bohumil Urban, Pavel Pelikán, and Jiří Kosta formed the first generation of brilliant economists who broke the Marxian constraints. All of them were the leaders of the economic reform of the Prague Spring of 1968, for which they were severely punished after the Soviet occupation. Our first reference concerns their publication alongside future Nobel Prize winners. 
-Zde bude přesná bibliografická citace (Feinstein + 4 str z kapitoly Kýn-Sekerka, po kliknutí se otevře pdf s citací (italika) a foto ukázkou- 

It took EI 6 years (1969-74) to recover from the totalitarian pressures and establish a diplomatic regime where the 25% minority of quantitative economists were tolerated by the largely pseudo-Marxist verbal “investigators”. This allowed EML in 1974-75 to design and launch "The System of 24 Models for Middle-Range Planning," which looked like something from another world. It was inspired by the research of L. Klein's Wharton Model and R. Stone's System of National Accounts (both of whom earned Nobel Prizes for their work). The idea of EML was to monitor and forecast the entire Czechoslovak economy, including labour, human capital, investments, physical capital, consumption, exports, imports, government services, and public budget – all broken down by 28 industries and subject to policy scenarios.

Zde bude další odkaz na další knihu atd.