Dictionary

command economy en · NOUN

Etymology

Calque of German Befehlswirtschaft (“command economy”).

Meanings

1. A planned economy in which the government (or some other central authority) is solely responsible for resource allocation, distribution and the setting of prices, with little to no market influence.
   • Khrushchev is turning the top-heavy administrative machinery of a gigantic command economy upside down. He is breaking overnight the customary links, thus clogging the well-worn channels of command; he is driving all the most competent higher administrators into frantic opposition […] 1957 September 14, Richard Löwenthal, “Party Vs. State”, in Problems of Communism, volume 6, number 5, page 1:
   • Following some National Socialist economists, we may distinguish three types of economies existing within Germany: a competitive economy, a monopolistic economy, and a command economy […] 1942, Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, New York: Harper and Row, page 291:
   • Until now, the highly centralised command economy has worked better in East Germany than in other Comecon countries, especially the Soviet Union. But now it is being called on to propel East Germany into the micro-electronics age and to close the 30 per cent gap in labour productivity compared with West germany. 1984 January 31, Leslie Colitt, “How a wage tax is really a price subsidy – Leslie Colitt in Berlin reports on an important change in the East German economy”, in Financial Times, European News, page 3:
   • An expansion of tourism [sc. in Yugoslavia] is one purpose of the measure. It is also part of another move by Yugoslavia away from the Soviet-style “command” economy. When Marshall Tito broke with Stalin, his country's economy was organized on the Russian pattern […] 1965 July 29, “Yugoslavia Tries Incentives”, in The Times, number 56386, London: News UK, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 11:
   • Willy Neuling saw three fundamental types of economic order, namely individualism, monopolism, and command economy (Befehlswirtschaft), and believed that a quite new type of economic theory, indispensable for analyzing the “command economy,” was in the offing […] 1943, Albert T. Lauterbach, Economics in Uniform: Military Economy and Social Structure, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, page 82:
   • Some scholars continue to blame the USSR's command economy for its 1991 collapse.
   • Yet it is hard to hand out enormous sums without turning poor countries into miniature command economies. Development projects mostly attempt to build entire industries, such as dairy farming or fisheries, from scratch. 2025 March 6, “Aiding and abetting”, in The Economist (Finance & economics section), London: The Economist Group, →ISSN, →OCLC:
2. (broadly) A planned economy.

Forms

Synonyms

directive planned economy · centrally planned economy

Translations (6)

da kommandoøkonomi (economy directly controlled by the government) · es economía comandada (economy directly controlled by the government) · ka გეგმიური ეკონომიკა (economy directly controlled by the government) · de Befehlswirtschaft (economy directly controlled by the government) · sv planekonomi (economy directly controlled by the government) · ka ბრძანებითი ეკონომიკა (economy directly controlled by the government)