Clifford Gaddy's and Barry Ickes's paradigm of the "virtual economy" has forced broad recognition of the inadequacies of the intended market reform policies in Russia. Their thesis - that Russia's economy is based on illusion or pretence about nearly every important economic yardstick, including prices, sales, wages and budgets - also sought to provide a framework for understanding how and why so much of Russia's economy has resisted reform. Gaddy and Ickes now use the virtual economy concept to project the near- and middle-term future of the Russian economy and suggest possible policy responses. Drawing on new empirical material from published and unpublished sources and from their own field of work in Russia, the authors examine critical aspects of the virtual economy: manufacturing enterprises, households and the public sectors, both local and federal. They also integrate the financial and agricultural sectors into their model.
Clifford G. Gaddy is a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development programs at Brookings. Barry W. Ickes is professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University.
"Russia's Virtual Economy is destined to become a classic in the field of post-Soviet studies...Throughout ten densely packed chapters, Gaddy and Ickes weave an elegant an subtle, but at the same time forceful, argument....Summarizing the contents of this complex albeit rich and rewarding book in any greater length than this would be doing it a disservice, though. Suffice it to say that it should be an obligatory future reference for everyone with even a passing interest in Russia" -Juan Carlos Boue, The Journal of Energy Literature, 2/1/2004 |"[A] penetrating and thought-provoking book which no serious student of Russia's post-Communist economy can afford to neglect." -Peter Oppenheimer, Christ Church College, Oxford, The Slavonic and East European Review, 10/1/2003 |"Gaddy and Ickes have succeeded in incorporating the 'heritage' of Soviet institutions into standard economic analysis. This makes their book one of the few economic books in which the real world is not written away." -Joop de Kort, Institute of East European Law and Russian Studies, Leiden University, Economic Systems, 1/1/2002 |"For those interested in Russia or in Russi'a place in the global economy, Gaddy and Ickes provide a satisfying explanation of how decades of central Soviet planning continue to affect Russian enterprises and why average Russians are worse off even though economic indictators seem to show progress." -Michael J. Harrison, Associate Editor, InterMedia Survey Institute, INCORE, 8/1/2005
