Authors:
- Provides a more realistic appreciation and understanding of East German economic history
- Offers fresh, new perspectives on a topic that has yet to seize potential of an important strand of economic thinking
- Discusses the implications and opportunities of the approach adopted for our understanding of East German history
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History (PEHS)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
East Germany’s economic history is typically told as a story of the unravelling of an inherently flawed system. Yet, while the system’s inefficiency is undeniable, its economic history was much richer than its comparatively poor economic performance suggests. For many who lived there, it was a system that, over its forty years, was capable of achievements and generally functioned at bearable levels. This book combines the insights of behavioural economics with archival research to peel away layers of rhetoric and assumptions about the East German economy and explore aspects of that underlying functionality.
Through a series of cases studies that examine the establishment of socialist workplaces, the searches for productivity growth and efficiency, and the emergence of financial crisis, the book considers the system from the perspective of the humans who operated it and made the decisions that made it work. Unencumbered by political preconceptions, it offers a more realistic understanding of East German economic history than that derived from stagnant debates about the clash of systems. The new perspectives and approaches presented demonstrate that, extracted from its Cold War context, East Germany’s economic history can be analysed for what it was, rather than for what it symbolised.Authors and Affiliations
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Department of Economics, Monash University, Clayton, Australia
Gary B. Magee, Wayne Geerling
About the authors
Gary B. Magee is a Professor of Economics at Monash University, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has published widely in the fields of economic history, history and historical political economics.
Wayne Geerling is an Associate Professor at Monash University. His expertise lies in European economic history. He has published widely in leading peer-reviewed journals in the fields of economics, economic history and history. He is the author (with Gary B. Magee) of Quantifying Resistance: Political Crime and the People’s Court in Nazi Germany (2018).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Socialism with a Human Face
Book Subtitle: Using Behavioural Economics to Understand East German Economic History
Authors: Gary B. Magee, Wayne Geerling
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Economic History
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0664-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore
eBook Packages: Economics and Finance, Economics and Finance (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-19-0663-3Published: 01 April 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-981-19-0666-4Published: 02 April 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-981-19-0664-0Published: 31 March 2022
Series ISSN: 2662-6497
Series E-ISSN: 2662-6500
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XX, 356
Number of Illustrations: 16 b/w illustrations
Topics: Economic History, Behavioral/Experimental Economics, History of Germany and Central Europe