On October 18, 2021 local time, the famous Hungarian economist János Kornai died in Budapest at the age of 93.
Kornajiu is well-known in the Chinese academic circles. He has many Chinese economists and many accomplished Chinese students. Therefore, in this article, the author does not intend to repeat his life and academic contributions thoroughly, but only from From a relatively unique perspective, he intercepted several fragments of his life and thoughts and made a few comments. From this perspective, Kornai may be the "wandering economist" who is most likely to affect the political and economic life of the entire country. Why did he end up being an atypical "wandering economist"?
The historian Mr. Qian Mu referred to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period as the "youshi society". Literally, the "youshi" refers to the "people who lobby and plan." On the other hand, the characteristic of wanderers is their "rootlessness", that is, the community they belonged to no longer exists, or they have very little contact with the original community. Therefore, it is often easier for travellers to accept a universal perfect idea that is free from the limitations of small communities, and to make policy recommendations based on it.
Economics, as the science of "economics the world and the people", has been a prominent school for centuries, and many economists have indeed made it their responsibility to help the government make suggestions. Therefore, broadly speaking, a "traveler economist" refers to an economist who makes policy recommendations based on a certain idea or a model of a specific ideal state. The inferior, seeing that the government has introduced a certain policy, hurriedly searched for the corresponding theoretical model to explain and defend it; among the multipliers, forward-looking, put forward policy recommendations on a certain field or industry based on the model; its superior Those who "for the emperor's teacher" "provide a long-term pair."
Whether it is from the perspective of life experience or the evolution of academic thought, Kornai had a great chance to become the best economist. In this regard, he himself has a clear understanding and evaluation. In his atypical academic autobiography "The Power of Thought," Kornai wrote, "I can also have some influence on the course of certain events...I can influence these people (people with power and wealth). There are many factors in the world, among which values, principles and concepts are certainly the most important factors.... If I don’t believe in the power of thought, then my entire life’s work will be meaningless."
But if Kornai is considered to be a stray economist based on this, then he can only see the appearance. Kornai is actually an atypical "traveler economist"-his influence is great, but he deliberately alienates politics, and never makes suggestions based on abstract perfect ideas, and he has never cut off from his affiliation. Of the community.
Early life experience
Kornai is a Jew, and a Jew who was born and lived in Eastern Europe. Compared with Jews in other regions (such as the United States), Jews in Eastern Europe lack a definite sense of belonging-they seem to be neither a ruler nor a "people", but because they are traditionally intellectually and morally superior to their neighbors The feeling of other people, so naturally there is a higher possibility of becoming a wanderer.
Kornai lived well since childhood. His father was a very successful lawyer and used to be the legal counsel of the German Embassy in Hungary. Kornai's parents are not only very generous to their children in investment in education, but also very tolerant. They never punish their children physically. The most severe "punishment" Kornai has seen throughout his childhood was when his father kicked the implantation aid after his brother made a mistake.
When he was young, his parents and siblings allowed him to do what he wanted, which made him feel from an early age that he must plan his own life independently and be responsible to himself no matter what he encounters. Since everyone in the family tries to be considerate of others when dealing with others and avoid disturbing or causing trouble to others, he has been nurtured into a self-aware individualist since he was a child.
In 1944, Kornai's father was sent to Auschwitz. His eldest brother Bandy and second brother Tommy were also conquered to labor, and Bandy died unfortunately in the Soviet Union. He, his mother and sister had to hide in Tibet, and their lives were hanging by a thread many times.
After 1945, Kornai became a member of the Hungarian Communist Party and had a successful career. After entering the Hungarian Communist Party’s central newspaper "Free People’s Daily" in 1947, Kornai was quickly promoted to the head of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and extensively contacted people from all walks of life from General Secretary Rakosi Magas down to ordinary workers. . In 1955, for supporting Imre Nagy, Kornai was expelled from the newspaper and subsequently entered the Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1956, Kornai drafted the economic part of the Hungarian reform policy program. In the process, he deeply felt that his knowledge was insufficient.
Later, after reflection, Kornai concluded that he had actually been in a state of "sleepwalking" in those years. Through a lot of observation, reading and reflection, he finally gradually understood the lifestyle he should adopt in the future, and finally made the choice to embark on a thorough academic path. In 1959, he finally determined his life plan and made the following decisions: (1) not to join any party; (2) not to immigrate; (3) to devote himself to academic research instead of politics as a career. Do not engage in illegal struggles, only hope to contribute to the revival of Hungary through their own academic activities; (4) Learn the basics of modern economics, integrate their studies and research into Western economics research; (5) Contrary to the original belief The doctrine of China broke completely. These decisions are the basic living principles that Kornai determined after careful consideration. He also told them to his family and closest friends, and they were used throughout the rest of his life.
Janos Kornai, economist, died on October 18, 2021 at the age of 93.
Jump out of the barriers of perfect theoretical models
The book "Excessive Centralization in Economic Management" written by Kornai in 1957 was the first work written by people living within the socialist system to systematically and empirically analyze the operating mechanism of the planned economic system.
From 1963 to the 1970s, Kornai and Liptak published a series of papers under the name of "Double Plan", which theoretically proved that "a perfect planned economy can also achieve optimal resources." Configuration". This is the famous Kornai-Liptak model, which describes the "perfect plan" and mirrors the Walrasian general equilibrium model that describes the "perfect market". The Kornai-Liptuck model is proposed on the basis of the Lange-Marinwow model. Lange advocates market socialism. Their model believes that the use of top-down flow of price information can achieve the optimal allocation of resources. In the Kornai-Liptak model, the top-down flow is quantitative information (resource quotas and production indicators). These two models complemented each other, and they were very attractive to the leftist economists in the Western world at that time.
The academic background of these papers by Kornai began in the great debate on "market socialism" in the 20th century. The most important opponents in the debate are Lange and Hayek. Hayek pointed out that market socialism cannot achieve the same benefits as the market economy because of information problems and incentive mechanism problems. Kornai later recalled that he found Lange's views very appetizing at the beginning. In addition, Lange's entire theoretical building was concise and harmonious, which fascinated him.
But he emphasized that Hayek's criticism of Lange is more thought-provoking. What Kornai agrees with Hayek is that we should think about problems from a practical rather than a purely theoretical perspective. Hayek’s insight is that the market is not only a balancing mechanism, but also a production and collection mechanism of knowledge and information. Because social knowledge is decentralized, only decentralized markets and private ownership can ensure that people directly enjoy incentives, so that their knowledge can be used to the fullest extent. The market economy itself is a system to solve information problems and incentive problems, while the planned economy needs other systems to solve these problems.
From Kornai's own review, Hayek's influence on him may have been underestimated in the past. It is Hayek's exposition that diverted his attention from the abstract ideal state and turned to the close connection between knowledge, incentive mechanisms and property relations in the real world.
During this period, Kornai may have experienced a mental journey of "from idealism to empiricism" similar to that of Gu Zhun. He soon turned to the study of "counter-equilibrium theory" and criticized both Langer's market socialism theory and general equilibrium theory. Moreover, his criticism of the equilibrium theory was based on political structure and property relations. Based on empirical observations of the indivisibility between market coordination.
This may be a very important joint for Kornai's thought development. Because as Xu Chenggang and others pointed out, starting from the Kornai-Liptuck model, apart from the direction of leftist economists (don’t forget, in those years, even Samuelson repeatedly predicted the Soviet Union’s future in the near future. It will surpass the United States), and another development direction is the theory of mechanism design, as well as the "market design" school of thought that continues to this day. But Kornai didn't seem to follow these two paths, so he couldn't become a typical traveler economist.
Alienate from current politics, but stay on the spot to observe and study
Kornai decided not to strive for political success, and did not want to try to combine the roles of politicians and researchers. However, he never thought about choosing a field completely unrelated to politics as his research object. What he most hopes to do is to understand and study the things around him, especially to understand the crux of the socialist system.
The Hungarian reform in 1956 was suppressed by the Soviet Union, and the strong experience during the period was the most powerful force that inspired Kornai's original ideas. In 1968, Hungary again initiated economic reforms, trying to incorporate "market socialism" into the socialist economic system at that time. Although this reform still followed the ideas he put forward in the 1950s, he firmly refused to join the reform committee established by the Hungarian Party Central Committee. Because at this time, he has changed from a "naive reformer" to a rigorous analyst and critic.
Judging from the trajectory of Kornai's life, his intention to alienate politics while staying on the scene is very obvious. He has many opportunities to emigrate in his life, but he has never emigrated. Since 1986, Kornai has been teaching at Harvard University, and he insisted on setting aside half of his time to work in Hungary during negotiations. In this regard, his explanation is that this is not only because he has a strong emotional attachment to Hungary, but also because of his professional research considerations: his expertise is to study the socialist system and post-socialist transition. The reason why his research results are They have unique authenticity, precisely because what they record is what he saw and personally experienced what happened in Hungary. He said, "Many of my researches with universal significance are conducted using Hungary as a case." The real challenge is to "conclude general conclusions from specific observations."
Kornai adopted the "system paradigm" when analyzing the socialist economic system. Common researches only perform partial analysis of the system, and only examine certain areas or certain system characteristics, while Kornai tries to show how the various parts of the socialist system are combined into a whole-politics, economy, There is a strong interaction between social relations and ideology, which together determine the behavioral laws of various groups and social roles. He believes that although his previous works have discussed different themes, they complement each other and cover all parts of the whole.
In the book "The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism", he tried to "comprehensively" and "completely" identify all the essential features of the socialist system, and decided to analyze the society from the two issues of political structure and ideology. The socialist system, and the role played by the Communist Party became the first analysis target. The basic point of the "Socialist System" is that the affinity between various elements in the traditional socialist system stems to a large extent from the natural selection process between systems and the subsequent evolutionary process, which are like gears. The state machine is perfectly embedded. Traditional socialism is a coordinated whole, and the reform process has destroyed its coordination.
"Give up" the handy Nobel Prize in Economics
As the founder of the "soft budget constraint" theory, the world's top transitional economics master, and the master of planned economy research in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Kornai has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Economics many times. In fact, at the turn of the new century, the academic circles once thought that the Nobel Prize in Economics was already in his pocket.
In 1999, the Nobel Prize Committee held the fifth Nobel Economics Forum in Stockholm. The Nobel Prize in Economics is awarded every year, but at that time the Nobel Economics Forum was rarely held. The Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded for decades, but at that time the Nobel Economics Forum was only held five times.
The theme of this Nobel Economics Forum is economic transition, and Kornai is the only keynote speaker invited by this forum, which shows Kornai's status in the eyes of academia and the Nobel Prize Committee. Economists generally speculate that this forum is in preparation for Kornai's Nobel Prize.
However, Kornai himself let the "cooked duck" fly. According to Xu Chenggang, in the keynote speech at the Nobel Economics Forum, Kornai severely criticized some economic policies and economists who were irresponsible to the transition countries. He criticized the rapid and large-scale privatization and the blind advocacy of marketization, that is, when the whole society is not ready, for example, there is no proper law, no proper law enforcement agency, no proper financial market. …When these conditions are not met, the privatization of state-owned enterprises with free warrants has caused very serious economic setbacks for the countries adopting these policies. The most prominent examples are the former Soviet Union countries such as Russia and Ukraine, and some Eastern European countries.
Because the criticized economists are all present, and they are very influential in the economic circle. Offending these economists is tantamount to giving up the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize in Economics is selected by fellow economists.
Of course, to say that Kornai took the initiative to "give up" the Nobel Prize is just the author's own speculation. But Kornai is obviously unwilling to make policy recommendations based on an economic model of hypothetical perfection, like those economists do. He is not that kind of stray economist. Kornai's thoughts have indeed had a great influence on the policies of many countries, but he is still an atypical economist.
