From Predation to Prosperity: How to Move from Socialism to Markets
By Michael S. Bernstam and Alvin Rabushka

This book was added to the web site on January 15, 2007.

This book starts with the experience of Russia since the end of central planning. It covers the great contraction of 1992-98 and the subsequent recovery in 1999-2006. It offers and empirically supports a uniform explanation of both the contraction and the recovery. It views Russia’s economy as a new economic system that evolved from central planning after liberalization and privatization in 1992 and adapted to the policy shift in late 1998. Russia inherited the entire array of enterprises from central planning where they formed a unified assembly line, a veritable nation-enterprise. With few newfangled enterprises, unlike China, these inherited enterprises evolved by default into a ubiquitous network, akin to a vertically integrated super-cartel. The inherited enterprise network was able to extract massive subsidies from the government and the public and redistribute national income. We call this new economic system Enterprise Network Socialism.

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Copyright © 2006 the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

• Preface
• Chapter 1. Free and Not So Free to Charge: Income Redistribution and Russia's GDP Contraction, 1992-98, and Recovery, 1999-2007
• Chapter 2. Paradigm Lost, Paradigm Regained: Common Versus Private Income
• Chapter 3. The Omnipresence of Common Income in a Multi-Dimensional World
  Section A. Charting a Multi-Dimensional World
• Chapter 3. The Omnipresence of Common Income in a Multi-Dimensional World
  Section B: Patterns of Multi-Dimensional Heterogeneity
• Annex 3.1. The Two-dimensional Table of Economic Species
• Annex 3.2. The Four-dimensional Table of Economic Species
• Annex 3.3. Four-dimensional Heterogeneity of Economic Species
• Chapter 4. The Evolution of Private Income: A Few Sketches and Approximations
• Addendum to Chapter 4. Fixing China's Banks, Not Russia's
• Chapter 5. The Taxonomy of Common Income (Section A)
• About the Authors