Economic systems is a collection of interrelated economic elements, forming a certain integrity, the economic structure of society; the unity of relations that develop over the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of economic goods.
These relationships can be carried out in different ways, and it is these differences that distinguish one economic system from another.
The use of resources to meet needs is subordinated to the economic goals pursued in their economic activity.
Economic the purpose of the consumer is the maximization of the satisfaction of all .
Economic purpose of the firm stands for maximization or minimization.
The main economic goals of modern society are: , improve production efficiency, full and socio-economic stability.
In the capitalist system material resources belong to private individuals. The right to enter into binding legal contracts allows individuals to dispose of their material resources at their own discretion.
The manufacturer seeks to produce ( WHAT?) the product that satisfies and brings him the greatest profit. The consumer himself decides what product to buy and how much money to pay for it.
Since, under conditions of free competition, the establishment of prices does not depend on the producer, then the question " AS?"to produce, the economic entity of the economy responds with the desire to produce products with lower prices than its competitor, in order to sell more due to lower prices. The use of technological progress and various management methods contribute to the solution of this problem.
Question " FOR WHOM?" is decided in favor of consumers with the highest income.
In such an economic system, the government does not interfere in the economy. Its role is reduced to the protection of private property, the establishment of laws that facilitate the functioning of free markets.
A command or centralized economy is the opposite. It is based on state property for all material resources. From here everything economic decisions accepted government bodies through centralized (directive planning).
For every enterprise the production plan provides for what and in what volume to produce, certain resources are allocated, thereby the state decides how to produce, not only suppliers, but also buyers are indicated, that is, the question is decided for whom to produce.
The means of production are distributed among branches on the basis of long-term priorities determined by the planner.
Today it is impossible to speak about the presence in this or that state in its pure form of one of the three models. In most modern developed countries, there is a mixed economy that combines elements of all three types.
A mixed economy involves the use of the regulatory role of the state and economic freedom manufacturers. Entrepreneurs and workers move from industry to industry by their own decision, not by government directives. The state, in turn, implements social, fiscal (tax) and other types of economic policy which contributes to some extent economic growth country and improve the living standards of the population.
An economic system is a set of interrelated elements that form a common economic structure. It is customary to distinguish 4 types economic structures Key words: traditional economy, command economy, market economy and mixed economy.
Traditional economy based on natural production. As a rule, it has a strong agricultural bias. The traditional economy is characterized by clan system, legalized division into estates, castes, closeness from the outside world. Traditions and unspoken laws are strong in the traditional economy. Personal development in the traditional economy is severely limited, and the transition from one social group to another, which is higher in the social pyramid, is practically impossible. The traditional economy often uses barter instead of money.
The development of technology in such a society is very slow. Now there are practically no countries left that could be classified as countries with a traditional economy. Although in some countries it is possible to single out isolated communities leading a traditional way of life, for example, tribes in Africa, leading a way of life that differs little from that of their distant ancestors. However, in any modern society remnants of ancestral traditions are still preserved. For example, this may refer to the celebration of religious holidays such as Christmas. In addition, there is still a division of professions into male and female. All of these customs affect the economy in one way or another: think of the Christmas sales and the resulting surge in demand.
command economy. A command or planned economy is characterized by the fact that it centrally decides what, how, for whom and when to produce. Demand for goods and services is established on the basis of statistical data and plans of the country's leadership. A command economy is characterized by a high concentration of production and monopoly. Private ownership of factors of production is practically excluded or there are significant barriers to the development of private business.
A crisis of overproduction in a planned economy is unlikely. The shortage of quality goods and services becomes more likely. Indeed, why build two stores side by side when you can get by with one, or why develop more advanced equipment when you can produce low-quality equipment - there is still no alternative. Of the positive aspects of the planned economy, it is worth highlighting the saving of resources, primarily human resources. In addition, a planned economy is characterized by a quick response to unexpected threats - both economic and military (remember how quickly the Soviet Union was able to quickly evacuate its factories to the east of the country, it is unlikely that this could be repeated in a market economy).
Market economy. Market economic system in contrast to the command is based on the predominance of private property and free pricing based on supply and demand. The state does not play a significant role in the economy, its role is limited to regulating the situation in the economy through laws. The state only makes sure that these laws are observed, and any distortions in the economy are quickly corrected by the "invisible hand of the market."
For a long time, economists considered government intervention in the economy harmful and argued that the market could regulate itself without external intervention. however, the Great Depression disproved this claim. The fact is that it would be possible to get out of the crisis only if there was a demand for goods and services. Since no group economic entities could not form this demand, then the demand could appear only from the side of the state. That is why, during crises, states begin to re-equip their armies - in this way they form the primary demand, which revives the entire economy and allows it to get out of the vicious circle.
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mixed economy. Now there are practically no countries left with only market or command or traditional economies. Any modern economy has elements of both a market economy and a planned economy and of course there are remnants in every country traditional economy.
In the most important sectors there are elements of a planned economy, for example, the production of nuclear weapons - who would entrust the production of such a terrible weapon to a private company? The consumer sector is almost entirely owned by private companies, because they are better able to determine the demand for their products, as well as to see new trends in time. But some goods can only be produced in a traditional economy - folk costumes, some foodstuffs, and so on, so elements of the traditional economy are also preserved.
Speaking about the planned-command or market economic system, it should be remembered that in its pure form they can only be found on the pages of scientific works. Real economic life, on the contrary, is always a mixed economic system.
The modern economic system of most developed countries of the world is precisely of a mixed nature. Many national and regional economic problems are solved here by the state.
As a rule, today the state participates in the economic life of society for two reasons:
Therefore, for the civilization of the late XX century. a mixed economic system prevailed.
The mixed economic system is based on private ownership of economic resources, although in some countries (France, Germany, Great Britain, etc.) there is a fairly large government sector. It includes enterprises whose capital is wholly or partly owned by the state (for example, the German airline Lufthansa), but which:
In these countries, the main economic issues are mainly decided by the markets. They also distribute the predominant part of economic resources. At the same time, some of these resources are centralized and distributed by the state through command mechanisms in order to compensate for some weaknesses in the market mechanisms.
On fig. 2.3 shows a scale that conditionally represents which economic systems various states belong to today.
Rice. 2.3. Types of economic systems: 1 - USA; 2 - Japan; 3 - India; 4 - Sweden, England; 5 - Cuba, North Korea; 6 - some countries of Latin America and Africa; 7 - Russia
A mixed economic system is a way of organizing economic life in which land and capital are privately owned, and distribution limited resources carried out both by markets and with significant participation of the state.
Here, the arrangement of numbers symbolizes the degree of proximity of the economic systems of various countries to a particular type. The pure market system is most fully realized in some countries of Latin America and Africa. Factors of production there are already predominantly in private ownership, and state intervention in the decision economic issues minimum.
In countries such as the United States and Japan, private ownership of the factors of production dominates, but the role of the state in economic life is so great that one can speak of a mixed economic system. At the same time, the Japanese economy retained more elements of the traditional economic system than the United States. That is why the number 2 (Japanese economy) is somewhat closer to the top of the triangle, symbolizing traditional system than the number 1 (US economy).
In the economies of Sweden and the UK, the role of the state in the distribution of limited resources is even greater than in the US and Japan, and therefore the number 4 symbolizing them is to the left of the numbers 1 and 2.
In its most complete form, the command system has now been preserved in Cuba and North Korea. Here, private property has been eliminated, and the state distributes all limited resources.
The existence of significant elements of the traditional economic system in the economy of India and similar countries in Asia and Africa (although the market system prevails here too) determines the placement of the number 3 corresponding to it.
And where is the place of modern Russia on such a conditional scale?
The location of the number 7 symbolizing it is determined by the fact that:
To what economic system does Russia's future path lie?
Depending on the economic mechanism and social structure, the types of economy are divided into such as:
These types of economic systems are associated with the distribution of funds and the presence of opportunity costs (lost income). They are used to form economic activity in society - a society of people coordinating their actions with each other according to the developed rules.
The traditional system is based on historical traditions that are passed down from generation to generation. In modern society, it is used in countries with an underdeveloped economic structure, which is based on agriculture, handicrafts, and primitive forms of trade. The role of the state in economic relations low. Markets act as the regulator of economic relations, where the priority is to extract one's own benefit, and not collective. New technologies are slowly introduced here due to the reluctance of people to make changes in their daily lifestyle. The distribution of resources, labor for the production of goods and its products, are based on the customs of the community. For example, the countries of Southeast Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan.
The traditional system is stable. It has practically no production costs, and workers are motivated to commercialize their skills, which has a positive effect on product quality. The system is characterized by:
The system allows for free trade, allowing for a decent standard of living.
The command system provides for state ownership of resources, centralized planning, and a minimum intensity of free market relations. The state decides everything - from the location of the enterprise to the channels for supplying raw materials and marketing the product. Power structures set profitability indicators, to which wages, bonuses and penalties are tied. This system is aimed at:
The command type of economy is currently used by Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea.
The market system is a guarantor of compliance with the terms of transactions, non-interference of third parties. It allows you to freely choose markets for goods and services. The entrepreneur independently chooses where to buy raw materials, what product to produce, to whom to sell it, how to use the income received. Main features:
This type of management in its pure form does not have real examples. The existing market systems of developed countries are based on the dominance of large corporations. Prices are held at a certain level and depend on the policy of vendors, which allows you to deviate from the model of perfect competition.
A mixed economy allows you to combine the possibilities of market and command systems. It involves the combination of the leading role of the state and freedom entrepreneurial activity. It is based on the following types of property:
The state performs a regulatory role by applying fiscal, antimonopoly and other types of economic policy, and producers of products and services have the right to independently choose the field of activity. A mixed type of economy is used in the UK, Germany and Russia.
The totality of all economic processes, committed in society on the basis of the property relations and organizational-legal forms that have developed in it, is the economic system of this society. In the last one and a half to two centuries, the following systems operated in the world:
Each system has its own national models of economic organization, as countries differ in their history, level of economic development, social and national conditions.
The transition from one economic system to another gives rise to a special, transitional state of the economy. In economics transitional type there is an intensive development of the institutions of the new system and more or less rapid elimination (or withering away) of the institutions of the former system. There are also transitional economic forms, for example, privatized enterprises that have not undergone market restructuring.
In any economic system, the primary role is played by the production of goods and services, together with their subsequent distribution, exchange, consumption and redistribution.
In each economic system, the main socio-economic problems are solved in their own way: what and how to produce and on what basis to distribute the created national product.
At the same time, economic systems differ from each other in their fundamentals. First, they have different forms of ownership. Second, they have different economic mechanism, thirdly, the methods of motivation to work are economic in varying degrees, fourthly, the way of organizing decision-making in market and administrative-planned economic systems have significant differences.
The economic system can be viewed as a way of organizing the joint activities of people to achieve the highest possible result. The method of such an organization is determined by a number of main, constitutive elements. Let us consider the existing differences by comparing the constitutive features of the two economic systems.
Table 1.3.1 Fundamentals of economic theory. Ed. Doctor of Economics, Professor S.I. Ivanov. M., s. 47
|
Type of ownership |
Information and coordination mechanism |
Methods of motivating people to work |
Method of organizing decision making |
|
|
Administrative planning system |
State |
Vertical transfer from the administrative center to the periphery |
Economic to a lesser extent, more - non-economic coercion (punishment for parasitism, the possibility of obtaining housing, etc. |
through direct directives, the decision is made by the center |
|
market system |
Price, through the market |
Economic |
Decisions are made by independent producers based on the motive of profitability and information coming from the market. |
Within the framework of this or that economic system, there are diverse models of economic development of individual countries and regions. Consider character traits economic systems.
Market economy. The distinctive features of this economic system were private ownership of economic resources (including the main resource for this system - capital); market mechanism regulation macroeconomic activities, based on free competition and the presence of many independent sellers and buyers of each product.
One of the main prerequisites for this system is the personal freedom of all participants in economic activity, i.e. not only a capitalist entrepreneur, but also a hired worker. The decisive condition for economic progress was the freedom of enterprise for those who had capital, and the freedom of the wage worker to sell his labor power.
The economic mechanism in the considered economic system is guided by the market situation, determined primarily by the level and dynamics of prices, commodity producers independently solve the problem of distributing all resources, producing those goods that are in demand on the market. Thus, the market, primarily through prices, coordinates the activities of millions of people.
Entrepreneurs want everything more income(profit), extremely economical use of natural, labor resources, capital, knowledge and maximize their entrepreneurial abilities in their chosen field of activity. This serves as a powerful stimulus for the development and improvement of the economy, reveals the creative possibilities of private property.
In the course of a long evolution in the XX century. market economy of free competition has become a modern market economy. Its main features are:
Administratively - planned economy. This system dominated earlier in the USSR, countries of Eastern Europe and a number of Asian states. The command-administrative system in most countries arose as a result of the interrupted evolution of the market economy.
Its distinguishing feature is that it is based on public, but in reality - on state property. It was created through the expropriation of private ownership of land, the nationalization in one form or another of all industrial, commercial and other types of enterprises.
The economic mechanism of the administrative-command system has a number of features. It assumes, firstly, direct control all enterprises from a single center - the highest echelons of state power, which nullifies the independence of economic entities. Moreover, this management is based on the state plan, which has a mandatory (directive) character for all enterprises and industries. Secondly, the state completely controls not only production, but also the distribution of products, as a result of which free market relationships between individual enterprises are excluded. Thirdly, the state pursues a policy of very low differentiation in wages, which undermines the material interest in its results.
The volume, assortment of products, price levels and all other aspects of economic activity were determined on the basis of the political and economic guidelines of the party-bureaucratic elite, the so-called nomenklatura. A significant part of the resources was directed to the development of the military-industrial complex. The system of strict central planning did not allow taking into account real economic needs, which gave rise to a total permanent scarcity of the economy. Orientation of planning mainly to quantitative natural indicators made the economy immune to the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution.
Numerous attempts in the 1950s-1980s. in the USSR and other socialist countries to reform and improve the planned economy were incompatible with the command-administrative system and rejected by it. The inability of the command-administrative system to ensure the transition to an intensive type of economic development made fundamental socio-economic transformations inevitable in almost all socialist (communist) countries. Strategy economic reforms in these countries is determined by the main trends in the development of world civilization, as a result of which a modern market economy is being built there. Economic theory/ Ed. V. A. Smirnova. M.: Finance and statistics, p. 58.
Traditional economic system is based on joint (collective) communal ownership of the main resource for this system - land. Distinctive features of the traditional economic system are as follows: an extremely primitive technology associated with primary processing natural resources, the predominance of manual labor. All key economic issues are resolved in accordance with time-honored customs, religious, tribal and even caste traditions. Organization and management economic life are carried out on the basis of decisions of the council of elders, instructions of leaders or feudal lords.
The traditional economic system has gone through several stages in its development, the system dominated the world before the market system, but at the present time it has been preserved in some of the most backward countries of Asia and Africa, although its elements can also be traced in countries of an average level of development.
mixed economy-- this is an economic system in which both the state and the private sector (enterprises and households) play an important role in the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of all resources and material goods in the country; state intervention in the market economy does not prevail over the regulatory role of the market.
A mixed economy is characteristic of many developed democratic countries of the West. AT real life it is impossible to find a state with a pronounced economic system. Often elements of one economic system coexist with elements of another. advanced countries(Germany, USA, France, etc.) strive to flexibly combine market efficiency with government regulation economy.
Most of the economic resources in a mixed economy are in private hands, numerous small businesses are combined with large corporations, incentives and free market principles are effective.
However, some important areas of the economy (for example, railways, fuel and energy and space complexes, general education and health care, social protection, etc.) belong to the state and the government actively influences economic and social processes. In some states, concern for the development of the social sphere is so significant (for example, in Germany or Sweden) that the economy of such countries is often characterized as a social market economy. Economic theory / Ed. V. A. Smirnova. M.: Finance and statistics, p. 59.
However, none of the existing economic systems can be perfect. Ideal societies exist only in theoretical constructions, but in reality it is important which of the systems is effective and viable.
Thus, it is customary to distinguish the following main types of economic systems: traditional, administrative-command, market and mixed.
Economic systems emerged from the solution economic problems associated with the distribution of limited resources and the presence of opportunity costs. In other words, the economic system is the way in which the economic life is formed in the country, society; the way in which decisions are made about what, how and for whom to produce.
