ABSTRACT
The main subject of Yugoslav economics after World War II was systemic reform. Its contribution was constrained by the, for the most part genuine, belief of the most influential economists in self-management, though there were serious disagreements about what was meant by self-management. The opposition to the mainstream consisted largely of those who believed in central planning, liberal economics being either irrelevant or subsumed in some way by the economics of self-management. Thus, when after decades of reforming and perfecting the self-management system, systemic transformation was to be faced, the economics profession lost much of its rhetoric and its credibility. Indeed, the minority of those advocating either centralization or economic nationalism gained the upper hand in many places. As a consequence, the dissolution of self-management and of Yugoslavia essentially sidelined the mainstream economists and in some cases increased significantly the influence of what one would expect to be an anachronistic alternative of socialists and nationalists.
