Michael Kaser | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1926-05-02)2 May 1926 London, England |
| Died | 15 November 2021(2021-11-15) (aged 95) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
| Influences | A C Pigou,J M Keynes |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Socialist economics Transition economics Area studies |
| School or tradition | Keynesian economics |
| Notable ideas | Comecon (1965) Soviet Economics (1970) |
Michael Kaser (2 May 1926 – 15 November 2021) was a British economist who specialised inCentral andEastern Europe and theUSSR and its successor states. He was Reader Emeritus in Economics at theUniversity of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow ofSt Antony's College, Oxford, and a Fellow ofTempleton College, Oxford. He was also Honorary Professor in the School of Social Sciences at theUniversity of Birmingham.[1] In a trio of books published between 1965 and 1970 Kaser presented a detailed picture of the workings of the socialist planned economies at enterprise, national and international levels. His work sought to applyKeynesian economic theory to the analysis of the socialistplanned economies and he identified the systemic problems that were neglected by the rulingcommunist parties, and which contributed to the disintegration of the economic system at the end of the 1980s.
His father Charles Kaser (1898–1983) was a French-speaking Swiss who settled in Britain as a banker and married an English woman Mabel (1891–1976), who had served on the staff of the UK Delegation to theVersailles Peace Conference. An early facility in the English and French languages was stimulated at home and by his Catholic-influenced political interests, to the extent that he learntSerbo-Croatian to attend a youth conference inZagreb andBelgrade in 1946, where he was one of the few non-communist speakers called to the podium. He attendedGunnersbury Catholic Grammar School andWimbledon College in London, before going up toKing's College, Cambridge. He completed the Economicstripos in two years, as required by wartime regulations, where his tutors wereA C Pigou andGerald Shove, and afterwards was directed to the Economics Section of the UKMinistry of Works, which was then planning the post-war house building programme. In 1947 he joined the economic research staff at the UKForeign Office and served as Second Secretary, Commercial Secretariat, at theBritish Embassy in Moscow. A paper on Soviet price reform published in theEconomic Journal (1950) led to an invitation onto the research staff of theUnited Nations Economic Commission for Europe inGeneva. Between 1951 and 1963 he participated in missions to five of the Soviet Republics and to all eight Central and East European states. He learnt Russian and Polish in the 1940s and 1950s and later added Albanian, Hungarian and Romanian. In Geneva, he met his wife Elizabeth (b. 1925), a technical editor at theWorld Health Organization (married 1954) with whom he raised five children. He became Visiting Professor at theGraduate Institute of International Studies, affiliated with theUniversity of Geneva, Switzerland (1959–63) and a visiting lecturer at the international business schoolINSEAD inFontainebleau, France (1958–91).
When the British government funded an expansion of university posts in Soviet and Eastern European studies he gained an appointment (1963) at theUniversity of Oxford jointly with a research fellowship atSt Antony's College, then a center for regional studies and with close links into government. On his promotion to a University Readership in Economics (1972), the College elected him a Professorial Fellow. He served on and chaired many University Boards and committees, including the General Board of the Faculties. He served similarly atLondon,Birmingham andReading universities. He held short- and long-term Visiting Lectureships and Professorships in the UK, Europe (Europa Institute, Amsterdam) and the United States (Universities of Michigan andStanford). Other professional institutions on the committees of which he served included theRoyal Economic Society, theRoyal Institute of International Affairs and theInternational Committee for Slavonic and East European Studies. Government service over some forty years included frequent requests for consultancies from Ministries and from theHouse of Commons and in the mid-1980s briefing sessions for thePrime Minister. He participated in a meeting convened by the Prime Minister in 1984 ahead of a visit byMikhail Gorbachev, following whichMargaret Thatcher made her famous remark that "I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together".[2] From time to time he was also consulted for his expertise not only on the USSR and Eastern Europe, but also on health and education economics. He undertook work for many international organisations – several UN agencies, theEuropean Commission, theInternational Monetary Fund, theEuropean Bank for Reconstruction and Development andNATO – and industry, includingConsolidated Gold Fields and the oil and gas companiesENI andShell, and wrote regularly for theEconomist Intelligence Unit andThe Annual Register. He served on the editorial boards of four professional journals and three trusteeships: the Foundation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, known asCumberland Lodge;Plater College, Oxford, then a Catholic adult education foundation; and theKeston Institute for the study of religion and communist countries, also based in Oxford at that time.[3]
Kaser was influenced by his father’s Social Christian values and joined theLiberal Party in 1945 at theGeneral Election of that year. He was awarded theOrder of St Gregory the Great by theHoly See in 1990 for his contribution to adult education at Plater College, Oxford. Under the presidency ofSali Berisha the government of Albania awarded him the Order ofNaim Frashëri in 1995, and the Polish government recognised his contribution with theKnight’s Cross, Order of Merit in 1999. He was instrumental in helping the Polish economistWłodzimierz Brus find a position at Oxford University after the latter was forced to leave Poland in 1972.[4] He assisted numerous students from Eastern Europe in developing their academic careers.
Kaser was an acknowledged Western expert on the socialist countries and maintained good contacts with his peers in those countries, including many reformers.[5] A thorough knowledge of data and sources together with inside information gave his publications weight. He contributed some 370 articles to scholarly journals, authored seven books and edited specialist and general works on economics, economic history,health economics and labour economics. He was the General Editor of the proceedings of theInternational Economic Association between 1986 and 2008.
Kaser withdrew from active involvement in academic and charitable work as he approached his 80th birthday. He died on 15 November 2021, at the age of 95.[4]
Soviet Economics (1970) gives an overview of the economic system of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from its foundation until the cautious economic reforms ofKhrushchev andBrezhnev. The study examines the evolving political priorities of the communist party leadership in the context of theMarxist theoretical framework; the challenges of theRussian Civil War;foreign intervention and the1941 invasion; post-war reconstruction; and the attempt to gain military and economic parity with the USA. At each point, Kaser describes how the internal dialogue between enterprises, consumers and the state apparatus influenced the strategies adopted for economic growth and agricultural and industrial development. Kaser highlights the contributions made to the internal debate byN. I. Bukharin,G. V. Plekhanov,E. A. Preobrazhensky,N D Kondratiev,A V Chayanov,V. G. Groman,L. V. Kantorovich,Y. G. Liberman,G. A. Feldman,V. V. Novozhilov,Branko Horvat andA. G. Aganbegyan. He is critical of the approaches ofWestern Marxists (for example,Paul A. Baran andPaul M Sweezy) and ofJoan Robinson as presenting an over simplified picture of the way decision-making operated and of tending to conflate state ownership with control over resources. He argues that because the planning procedures had changed little since thefirst five-year plan (1928–32), enterprises were forced to engage in numerous deals over the composition and timing of their supplies and deliveries that in turn manifested itself in both chronic shortages and persistent waste. The "three laws of socialism" promulgated byJoseph Stalin, which in effect meant thatheavy industry was given preference over the production ofconsumer goods, along with a high rate of saving and the maintenance of a stable proportion in the shares of national output between agriculture and industry, held back the growth of national income in comparison with market oriented industrial countries, notably the USA. Kaser explains how the invention of mathematical tools to achieve balance in a planned economy were swept aside under Stalin and continued to be viewed with suspicion until the 1960s. Even so, he doubts whether such computerised techniques could in practice generate efficient pricing and assure balanced growth and generaleconomic equilibrium in the USSR.
InPlanning in East Europe (1970) Kaser and Janusz G. Zieliński describe the management of industry in Eastern Europe as comprising typically several tiers of organisation: the central planning and control authorities, the enterprise or combination (or group) of enterprises, the material-technical supply organisations and the banks, and domestic retail and foreign trade organisations. The authors analyse the scope of planning and of markets, the tension between directives and competition, price-setting and the relations between managers and workers. The book covers the context and options for economic reform in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia.
InComecon (second edition, 1967), Kaser presents the history and prospects of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), orComecon, which published the barest minimum about itself. The study includes extracts and summaries of the CMEA charter and principles, its internal organisation and procedures and its approach towards pricing, technical co-operation, investment and integration based upon specialisation and the division of labour within the socialist bloc. The political context of the CMEA's activities are set out, as are the theoretical considerations in which Kaser includes an extended discussion of the role of international and internal markets in the bloc's aim of "developing and consolidating a world economic system of socialism", and intended to include eventually the developing countries of Asia and Africa. Kaser highlights the difficulty facing an economy planned on a national basis has in integrating trading relations andforeign direct investment without devolving decision-making to enterprises and without establishing a clearing mechanism for transactions or introducing currency convertibility. He identifies as a key problem the contradictory objectives set for the CMEA of maintaining a balance of payments, cost-minimization and the development of domestic resources without providing for the transfer capital between richer and poorer CMEA members or the alignment of internal prices with world prices.
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