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In the mid-1980s, Czechoslovakia was the most prosperous country in the Eastern Bloc. Although levels of consumption were well below those common in Western Europe, inhabitants of Czechoslovakia enjoyed a standard of living generally higher than that found in most other East European countries. Heavily dependent on foreign trade, the country nevertheless had one of the Eastern Bloc's smallest international debts to non-communist countries. The Czechoslovak planned economy possessed serious structural problems. Like the rest of the Eastern Bloc economies, producer goods were favored over consumer goods, causing consumer goods to be lacking in quantity and quality in the shortage economies that resulted. Economic growth rates lagged well behind Czechoslovakia's western European counterparts. Investments made in industry did not yield the results expected. Consumption of energy and raw materials was excessive. Czechoslovak leaders themselves decried the economy's failure to modernize with sufficient speed. The differing statistical concepts and procedures used by communist and non-communist economists make assessment of the status of the Czechoslovak economy complicated. Foreign trade statistics are particularly difficult to assess because a variety of currency conversion methods were employed to calculate trade turnover value. Data calculated on the basis of non-communist concepts will be identified here by the use of such Western terms as gross national product; Czechoslovak statistics will be called official data or identified by such terms as net material product or national income. ==Functioning of the economy== The Czechoslovak economy, like most economies in communist countries, differed markedly from market or mixed economies. The main difference is that while in market economies, decisions by individual consumers and producers tend automatically to regulate supply and demand, consumption and investment, and other economic variables, in most communist economies, these variables are decided by a national plan that has the force of law. In Czechoslovakia, like in most Communist countries, the centralized economic structure paralleled that of the government and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Československa—KSČ). This structure gave the party firm control over the government and the economy. It is generally referred to as the Soviet model and was first applied in the Soviet Union, which was initially an agrarian nation with extensive natural resources, a large internal market, and relatively little dependence on foreign trade; the goal was to quickly develop heavy industry and defense production. Czechoslovakia, by contrast, was a small country that had already reached a high level of industrialization and was rather heavily dependent on foreign trade when the Soviet system was first imposed after World War II. In the mid-1980s, Czechoslovakia had a highly industrialized economy, a fact reflected in the 1985 official statistics concerning production of the net material product of the country (the official measure of aggregate production). The industrial sector accounted for 59.7 percent of the value of the net material product; construction, 11.2 percent; agriculture and forestry, 7.5 percent; and various other productive services (including transport, catering, and retailing, among other activities), 21.6 percent. As of 1980 the socialist sector (state enterprises or cooperatives) generated 97.4 percent of the national income. Of the total work force, almost 99.8 percent was employed in the socialist sector. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Economy of communist Czechoslovakia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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