by PENCHEV Pencho | Friday, January 20, 2017

During the 1930s and early 1940s the problems of the economic dirigisme and its theoretical analysis attracted the attention of the Bulgarian economists. To some extent it was a compensation for the fact that they missed the socialist calculation debate of the interwar period. Their analyzes were based mainly on the framework of the neoclassical meta-theory in combination with various other theoretical approaches. They managed to identify a number of problems associated with long-term functioning of the regulated (corporatist) economy - the impossibility to master and control the spontaneous market forces by means of the governmental regulation, inherent administrative constraints for the government and public officials to introduce and control the strict and conscientious implementation of all the laws and normative acts of the system of economic dirigisme etc. A new theory of international trade was developed, whose author was seeking to break away from the rejected labor theory of value. The main content of his concept lies in the claim that protectionism in certain cases may have positive consequences. The Bulgarian economists convincingly proved the incompatibility of capitalism with planning.

 

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by NENOVSKY Nikolay and PENCHEV Pencho | Thursday, December 24, 2015

Unlike the well known wave of German-speaking economists-émigrés during the interwar, the Russian-speaking emigration has not been subject to a systematic analysis. Chronologically, the Russian emigration was the first (after the arrival of the Bolsheviks to power in 1917) and not of less significance than the German-speaking emigration. The Russian emigration also makes important contributions to "high economic theory" and it is essential for the formation of the scientific and economic communities and traditions in several of South East European countries (Bulgaria, former Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, etc.). The majority of émigré Russian economists shared the liberal economic views, studied in Germany and Austria. Our interest in these economists is a result of the observation that the research made by some of them offers an original synthesis of the main ideas of the Austrian school (especially those of Carl Menger) and the key elements of Russian economic thought, especially the original liberal theory system of Peter Struve. The ignorance of this synthesis is a missed opportunity for further development of Menger’s theory, as well as a differentiation of a specific variant of the Austrian School. In this article we analyze the contributions of two main representative of this synthesis, namely Simeon Demostenov (1886-1966) and Naum Dolinski (1890-1968).

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