Plan execution and the workability of soviet planning

In the execution phase of its planning, the Soviet economy contains mechanisms which, although they do not consistently move the system toward its efficiency frontier, prevent it from falling disastrously short of it. The mechanisms include flows of nonprice scarcity information, generated in the plan's execution, and responses to that information, improvised both by the central planners and by subordinate participants. The information is usually poor, but, for any given error in it, the odds increase with the degree of initial inefficiency that the responses will be toward the frontier. At identifiable limits, responses in the right direction become certain.