Talk:Command economy

Definitions
I got out my econ notes from a while back, if someone wants to rewrite the article with these definitions assuming they get no objections, go ahead:

There are two different ways to catergorize an economy into two.

Little Regulation Heavy Regulation

and

Low Government Expenditure High Government Expenditure

Heavy regulation AND high government expenditure are command economies, heavily regulated economies are planned (price wages enforced by the Nazis for example (although I didn't mean the example to be so extreme)), little regulation is decentralized, low government expenditure is capitalist, high government expenditure is socialist, and free market is both low government expenditure and little regulation.

Note that these are very subjective, and are not as simple as saying "Above 50% government expenditure as a portion of the GDP is socialist," because France has above 50% government expenditure as a portion of GDP and some people refer to it as Capitalist and some as Socialist. Similarly the argument goes for little and heavy regulation, some may say that the U.S. is decentralized while others are extreme enough to say it's a planned economy, the difference in opinion comes from the subjectivity of the two terms (I, for example, say that the U.S. is a planned economy because I'm pissed off and opposed to the regulations on power companies; but that's my opinion). China considers itself Socialist, while many other consider it Capitalist. Some consider the Soviet Union Capitalist because of it's Black Market activities. And so on.

In other words:

Little Regulation AND low government expenditure=Free Market Economy

Little Regulation=Decentralized Heavy Regulation=Planned

and

Low Government Expenditure=Capitalist High Government Expenditure=Socialist

High government Expenditure AND heavy Regulation=Command Economy

Oh! And a mixed economy is any economy that is thought of as a mix between socialist and Capitalist, technically this is all countries, but it is also a subjective factor (Subjective in that the percentiles aren't really placed, it's not like below 10% government expenditure is Capitlist, from 10-90 is mixed, and Socialist is >90).

If no one else ends up objecting to this, I'll begin unstubbing this command economy article. Fephisto 16:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Previous redirection
This page previously redirected to Planned Economy. I've de-directed because I've just made substantial changes to both articles and hope they can grow separately from now on. The Land 14:55, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Definitions: Reply
Those are characteristics that may be used to find economies that approximate command economies. It sounds like criteria set out in the opening of a research paper. That's fine, but the previous definition was the abstract definition used in economic theory. A pure command economy has probably never existed much like a free-market economy has never existed. Your professor most likely presented criteria for finding real-world approximations to the pure command economy of economic theory. However, a rigorous definition must be made for purposes of economic modeling. The model that follows has important results for economic theory such as the high transaction costs and price signals that are mentioned in paragraph two.

We cannot infer very many interesting results on the basis of a qualitative judgement of regulation and government expenditure in GDP. But we can infer quite a bit if we rigorously define a command economy according to central control of price and output.

In any case, there are many definitions and I need to do more research on it. Off to Jstor I go...

--10lbs of potatoes 18:44, 20 December 2005 (UTC)