Thursday, April 23, 2015

Principal-agent problems in the Soviet Union, circa 1990

Widespread fictitious economic accounting was foiling planners to the point that the KGB employed its own spy satellites to ascertain the size of the Uzbek cotton harvest, but the spy agency itself suffered from internal falsifications.
From Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted, p. 67.

1 comment:

  1. More on the Uzbek cotton scandal here. Apparently it was a huge deal!

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