ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe in 1989, and in the Soviet Union in 1991, discussion over the meaning and scope of the notion of transition from central planning to a market economy widened considerably. Although not widely understood or indeed studied prior to the events at the end of the 1980s, Vietnam, like China and Laos, had already undergone important social and economic change in the direction of a market economy. During the 1930s the crash industrialization program did succeed in creating a basis for economic development, but with massive costs. Economic agents therefore have to acquire the freedom and ability both to make these calculations and to act upon them. It is widely accepted that the heavy use of compulsion and the creation of the growth pattern typical of a central-planning system leads to considerable economic distortions, of a character particular to that economic system.
