ABSTRACT
The growing disparity between the level of domestic and world prices is of such long standing in Czechoslovakia (and not only there) that eco nomists have come to look at it as more or less a fact of nature. Although this disparity stems from vital economic processes affecting the very ground work of the economy, no examination has been made of its origin, or of the factors shaping its development hitherto. Protection of the home price system from the fluctuations of world markets was unequivocally and unreservedly proclaimed as one of the prime advantages of the traditional administrative directive system of planning and management.
