Price Formation and Comparison of Different Variants of Economic Measures (Models of Optimal Development of the National Economy as a Means of Theoretical Analysis of Socialist Economics)

The great significance of mathematical methods of solving concrete economic problems is generally recognized at the present time. Yet it seems to us that some Soviet economists still underestimate the role of mathematical methods in the theoretical study of socialist economics and planning and, in the first place, in solving a number of methodological problems upon which the effectiveness of applying mathematics to individual concrete problems especially depends. We mean such problems as the principles for establishing prices in a socialist economy and the comparison, in evaluating economic measures, of expenditures and results that relate to different points in time (the problem of the assessment of capital investments and current expenditures also comes to an evaluation of the "time factor").