[1]
Tadeusz wrote an important and provocative paper in which he offers his personal account of the development of economics in Poland. However, the time-span of his analysis is much longer than the title suggests as it covers not only a period of transformation after 1989 but extends to both the inter-war period (New tendencies in the thirties) and the after war “socialist period” (Soviet Marxism’s intermezzo and revisionism). When I call the paper “provocative” I do not have these two parts in mind; I find them very well balanced and hardly controversial. Tadeusz’s views become much more controversial when he moves to the more recent past. The provocative character of the paper stems mainly from the fact that his analysis - and above all - his assessment of the after 1989 period is not confined to “the state of economics” but extends to “the state of the economy”. Methodologically, I find this approach fully warranted, as it would be rather unwise to separate the evolution of economics from changes in the economy. However, I disagree with some of his conclusions regarding interactions between the two. In general, I disagree more with his interpretation and assessment of the results of transformation in Poland than with his view on the role played by economists in the process of systemic changes. Obviously, it would be far beyond the scope of the present comments to try to quarrel with Tadeusz on whether the transformation in Poland has so far been largely a success (as I see it) or a failure (as Tadeusz seems to perceive it). Anyway, as we all know, in spite of many conferences recently held on “A Decade of Transformation” etc., there may be an emerging consensus on some of the issues but the jury is still out on many others. Therefore, in my comments I will confine myself to some of those points raised (or omitted) by Tadeusz which are directly related to the state of economics. I have, nevertheless, to stress that in my opinion Tadeusz sometimes goes much too far in his critical evaluation of the transformation process. For example, it would be difficult to support empirically his view that the boom in Poland has been accompanied by “reduced real wages of the majority of employees”, particularly when wages would be compared in dollar terms.
[2]
Let me express my doubts and critical remarks in the following points:
In the Introductory remarks Tadeusz writes that in the beginning of transformation “the narrowly defined economics” (...) “was of little use”. I am not convinced that this opinion is relevant to the Polish case. Due to inherited high inflation approaching 25% monthly in autumn of 1989, there was no other feasible option than to disinflate first, and in this respect conventional macroeconomics had some lessons to offer. Without stabilising the economy first, it would have been virtually impossible to start the process of systemic changes in general and of privatisation in particular. Thus in the first year of transformation in Poland not only policy-makers but also economists were mainly preoccupied with macroeconomic issues. Having said this, I would nevertheless argue that in the same period the evolutionary-institutionalist perspective 1 (Note1: As defined by G. Roland, Transition and Economics. Politics, Markets and Firms, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2000.) was also present among policy-makers, even though not explicitly. This perspective, insisting on “aggregate uncertainty” regarding the transformation outcomes, was reflected for example in the 1991 Privatisation Law which assumed many different possible paths and methods of ownership changes.
Reconstructing (and perhaps simplifying) Tadeusz’s view, one could see transformation in Eastern Europe as a generally homogenous process pioneered by Poland, the pattern of which was imposed by “the minority” (i.e. IMF) in an undemocratic manner. But what is actually more surprising is that those allegedly homogenous transformers have finally built distinctly different institutional structures which in the future may further evolve toward different models of capitalism. Different approaches to privatisation may be one of the explanations of this striking diversity.
As Tadeusz documents, “The Negotiated Economy Forum” appeared in the early 1990s as a “heterogeneous current” in economic thinking offering an alternative to the Washington Consensus ⓘ. As one of the co-organizers of this seminar held in Kraków, I am of course glad that it received such an prominent place in Tadeusz’s analysis. I think, however, that in spite of many excellent foreign scholars 2 (Note2: I should like to mention that the seminar was not exclusively devoted to the „heterogeneous current” in economics, with Professor Patrick Minford being the most characteristic „counter-example”.) the seminar managed to attract, the role it played in the Polish discourse was unfortunately rather limited and smaller than one could read from Tadeusz’s paper. One explanation may be that this initiative was a bit ahead of time in that it originated when the economic situation was still dominated by disinflation and by much bigger than expected fall in GDP ⓘ. Ironically, we strongly need a revival of institutionally-oriented research now when a significant slowdown in growth has probably been largely due to the process of weakening of existing institutions.
One of the striking features of economic research in Poland, hardly touched by Tadeusz, is the very minor role or almost non-existence of political economy among approaches to doing economics. Given the strong linkages between the polity and the economy during transformation, one could expect that this strand of analysis should have flourished and should have even been over-represented in research. Instead of this, there seems to be a big and growing gap between attention that politicisation of the economy receives in the media and in the research. It is highly symptomatic that no single paper written from political economy perspective was submitted to the VII Congress of Polish Economists held in Warsaw in January 2001. It would be interesting to explore why this research perspective has been neglected in Poland since aversion to the name “political economy” does not offer a sufficient explanation.
Comparative economic systems analysis has been another strikingly neglected area of research in Poland (although to a much lesser extent than political economy). And whenever this line of research was undertaken, it was predominantly oriented towards the mature, mainly Western European, market economies. I have the impression, that when Tadeusz refers to the alternatives lost due to the imposition of the Washington Consensus upon Poland, he has also this group of countries (and particularly the Scandinavian ones) in mind. I think that this normative frame of reference, reinforced by the prospective accession to the EU, has had a negative impact on the appropriate allocation of time in research carried out in Poland. Relatively too much time has been spent on studying the EU model(s) of capitalism, whereas too little effort has been allocated to analysing different constraints faced by emerging market economies. This negligence has also been reflected in teaching: no development economics textbook has been translated into Polish and we do not have this subject within the obligatory curriculum prepared and introduced by the Ministry of Education.
The late 1990s are strongly under-represented in Tadeusz’s analysis of the recent history of the Polish economic thought: after mentioning the “Solidarity” programme of 1981, he immediately turns to the Round Table Agreement. However, the years 1987-88 are also very important, because it was precisely at that time that “taboo issues” such as privatisation started to be introduced into economists’ discourse (sometimes “between the lines”). At the same time, some of the reformers who - given the earlier political constraints - had tried so far to develop and operationalise a concept of employee self-government as a second-best solution, now decided to “reincarnate” into full-fledged liberals.
I think that Tadeusz should have emphasised more the peculiar trade-off between research and teaching that has dominated economics in Poland following the unprecedented boom in non-public higher education. On the one hand, we should of course be happy that so many young people have decided to invest in their human capital. On the other hand, a very strong demand for teaching has meant (given limited supply of teachers) that incentives at all generational levels have increasingly operated against research. The excessive teaching load which has led to this anti-research bias may, unfortunately, have also some long-term adverse consequences due to a specific form of hysteresis effect. One can say that already in the 1990s research has generally stagnated as more and more time has been allocated to teaching. As a result, a quality gap in economic research vis-à-vis Western Europe and the United States has further increased. Another dangerous tendency has taken place within teaching itself. The strong boom in non-public higher education concerned almost exclusively the first degree (B.A.) in business or economics which has meant a bias towards less demanding, introductory courses. Consequently, less time has been allocated to intermediate and advanced courses teaching of which could encourage younger scholars to improve their analytical skills with important positive spill-overs to research.
