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Originally published in 1980, Urbanization in Socialist Countries addresses the complex situation in urban policy development in European Socialist countries. The book examines the urban policy situation in eight countries and provides an analytical framework that addresses the fundamental issues they have faced. The book focuses on the system of settlement and on such problems as its regulation, as well as analysis of the goals, instruments and techniques used in planning the urbanization process in different socialist countries. The book aims to throw light on the basic premises underlying the formulation of urbanization concepts and reveal their main features and lines of development.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Original Title Page -- Original Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Contributors -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Social welfare under socialism -- 2 China -- 3 Cuba -- 4 Czechoslovakia -- 5 Hungary -- 6 North Korea -- 7 Poland -- 8 Soviet Union -- 9 Yugoslavia -- Appendices -- Index

With the emergence of collectivization, the communal movement, and the food crisis, the development of agriculture in socialist countries has become a topic of great interest to economists. Focusing on productive efficiency, Dr. Wong estimates an agricultural metaproduction function for nine countries--China, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union--and computes both the partial productivities and total productivity in comparable units. Using the growth accounting procedure, the author performs a quantitative comparative analysis of the differences and the sources of differences in agricultural productivity among socialist countries. Methods of analyzing productivity measures are described, revealing the contribution of land, labor, education, and other factors in agricultural growth. Dr. Wong concludes by discussing the policy implications for development strategy and the effects on the world food market.

A discussion of the consequences of attempting to explain current events in Eastern Europe & the USSR without adequate conceptual frameworks or data. In particular, two "paradigms" are critiqued. The standard paradigm is tendentious to US Cold War policy. While it has provided some useful research for sectoral analysis, it has been limited by an excessive focus on politics, & too little qualitative analysis of documents & populations, resulting in a prejudicial view of these political systems & an equally prejudicial view of alternatives to socialism. A second paradigm, supported here, assumes that these countries had relatively socialized political economies with elements of democracy, & were operating & continue to operate in a context of parameters set largely by global markets. Thus, any analysis of social change in the socialist world would have to take account of the element of "social value" that defines units of socialist productivity, the earlier history of popular mobilizations, & the problem, shared with all other nations, of attempting to regulate the nation according to domestic considerations while engaging in reorganization according to the demands of international capitalist markets. 7 References. Modified AA