The Economics of Coercion and Conflict

The papers brought together in this volume represent a decade of advances in the historical political economy of defence, dictatorship, and warfare. They address defining events and institutions of the world in the twentieth century: economic consequences of repression and violence, the outcomes of two world wars, and the rise and fall of communism. They cross traditional disciplinary boundaries, combining a broad sweep with close attention to measurement and narrative detail; offering insights into these issues from economics, history, political science, and statistics; and demonstrating in action the value of a multi-disciplinary approach.
The author was one of the first economists to leverage the opening of former Soviet archives. He has led international projects that reinvented the quantitative economics of the two world wars and contributed significantly to historical Soviet studies. In 2012, he shared with Andrei Markevich the Russian National Prize for Applied Economics, which was awarded in recognition of their research.
Contents:Global Conflict:War and Disintegration, 1914–1950 (Jari Eloranta and Mark Harrison)Why the Wealthy Won: Economic Mobilization and Economic Development in Two World Wars (Mark Harrison)The USSR and Total War: Why Didn't the Soviet Economy Collapse in 1942? (Mark Harrison)The Frequency of Wars (Mark Harrison and Nikolaus Wolf)Communism and Defense:Soviet Industry and the Red Army Under Stalin: A Military-Industrial Complex? (Mark Harrison)Contracting for Quality Under a Dictator: The Soviet Defense Market, 1930–1950 (Mark Harrison and Andrei Markevich)A Soviet Quasi-Market for Inventions: Jet Propulsion, 1932–1946 (Mark Harrison)The Political Economy of a Soviet Military R&D Failure: Steam Power for Aviation, 1932–1939 (Mark Harrison)Communism and Coercion:The Fundamental Problem of Command: Plan and Compliance in a Partially Centralized Economy (Mark Harrison)Accumulation and Labor Coercion Under Late Stalinism (Paul R Gregory and Mark Harrison)Economic Information in the Life and Death of the Soviet Command System (Mark Harrison)Coercion, Compliance, and the Collapse of the Soviet Command Economy (Mark Harrison)Readership: Professionals, researchers, and advanced undergraduates in history, applied economics and political science.Key Features:Includes widely cited explanations of the outcomes of the world wars, communism's successes and failures in peace and war, and the eventual collapse of the Soviet UnionOne of the first economists to take advantage of the opening of former Soviet archives, Mark Harrison went on to lead international projects that reinvented the quantitative economics of the two world wars and to deeper investigations of the working arrangements of Soviet rule in a comparative perspective