26 Facts About Michael Kaser

Michael Kaser was a British economist who specialised on Central and Eastern Europe and the USSR and its successor states.

Michael Kaser was Reader Emeritus in Economics at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, and a Fellow of Templeton College, Oxford.

Michael Kaser was Honorary Professor in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham.

Michael Kaser's work sought to apply Keynesian economic theory to the analysis of the socialist planned economies and he identified the systemic problems that were neglected by the ruling communist parties, and which contributed to the disintegration of the economic system at the end of the 1980s.

At each point, Michael Kaser describes how the internal dialogue between enterprises, consumers and the state apparatus influenced the strategies adopted for economic growth and agricultural and industrial development.

Michael Kaser is critical of the approaches of Western Marxists and of Joan Robinson as presenting an over simplified picture of the way decision-making operated and of tending to conflate state ownership with control over resources.

Michael Kaser argues that because the planning procedures had changed little since the first Five Year Plan, enterprises were forced to engage in numerous deals over the composition and timing of their supplies and deliveries that in turn manifested itself in both chronic shortages and persistent waste.

Michael Kaser explains how the invention of mathematical tools to achieve balance in a planned economy were swept aside under Stalin and continued to be viewed with suspicion until the 1960s.

The political context of the CMEA's activities are set out, as are the theoretical considerations in which Michael Kaser includes an extended discussion of the role of international and internal markets in the bloc's aim of "developing and consolidating a world economic system of socialism", and intended to include eventually the developing countries of Asia and Africa.

Michael Kaser identifies as a key problem the contradictory objectives set for the CMEA of maintaining a balance of payments, cost-minimization and the development of domestic resources without providing for the transfer capital between richer and poorer CMEA members or the alignment of internal prices with world prices.

Michael Kaser's father Charles Kaser was a French-speaking Swiss who settled in Britain as a banker and married an English woman Mabel, who had served on the staff of the UK Delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference.

Michael Kaser completed the Economics tripos in two years, as required by wartime regulations, where his tutors were A C Pigou and Gerald Shove, and afterwards was directed to the Economics Section of the UK Ministry of Works, which was then planning the post-war house building programme.

Michael Kaser learnt Russian and Polish in the 1940s and 1950s and later added Albanian, Hungarian and Romanian.

Michael Kaser became Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, affiliated with the University of Geneva, Switzerland and a visiting lecturer at the international business school INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France.

Michael Kaser served on and chaired many University Boards and committees, including the General Board of the Faculties.

Michael Kaser served similarly at London, Birmingham and Reading Universities.

Michael Kaser held short- and long-term Visiting Lectureships and Professorships in the UK, Europe and the United States.

Michael Kaser served on the editorial boards of four professional journals and three trusteeships: the Foundation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, known as Cumberland Lodge; Plater College, Oxford, then a Catholic adult education foundation; and the Keston Institute for the study of religion and communist countries, based in Oxford at that time.

Michael Kaser was influenced by his father's Social Christian values and joined the British Liberal Party in 1945 at the General Election of that year.

Michael Kaser was awarded the Order of St Gregory the Great by the Holy See in 1990 for his contribution to adult education at Plater College, Oxford.

Michael Kaser assisted numerous students from Eastern Europe in developing their academic careers.

Michael Kaser was an acknowledged Western expert on the socialist countries and maintained good contacts with his peers in those countries, including many reformers.

Michael Kaser contributed some 370 articles to scholarly journals, authored seven books and edited specialist and general works on economics, economic history, health economics and labour economics.

Michael Kaser was the General Editor of the proceedings of the International Economic Association between 1986 and 2008.

Michael Kaser withdrew from active involvement in academic and charitable work as he approached his 80th birthday.

Michael Kaser died on 15 November 2021, at the age of 95.