Concluding Remarks: Options for the 1990s

Labour shortages have presented the Soviet economic system with an important barrier to economic growth. They have brought about calls, on the one hand, for refinements to be made to the planning of capacity-labour balances and, on the other, for economic incentives encouraging more efficient utilisation of labour resources. Normative planning based on stable norms has been introduced and in part implemented as an alternative to directive and flexible indicators. More radical reforms are scheduled for the last decade of the century. Labour shortages have for the first time posed a serious challenge to the raison d’être of Soviet economic planning, its means and its targets.