Reward Structures in a Planned Economy: The Problem of Incentives and Efficient Allocation of Resources

Abstract

This paper considers a reward mechanism for inducing the choice of a socially optimal level of output by a socialist price-setting manager. Under this mechanism the planner is assumed to have no information other than the observed output and price level. It thus has informational advantages over other schemes thus far discussed in the literature. The other schemes require the additional knowledge of demand elasticities of all the products produced in the economy. Besides this informational advantage the reward structure suggested here also eliminates other basic weaknesses of those schemes suggested previously.