The political economy of a Soviet military R&D\ud failure : steam power for aviation, 1932 to 1939

摘要

By studying a Soviet R&D failure, the prewar attempt to create a new aeroengine\udtechnology based on the steam turbine, we find out more about the motivations,\udstrategies, and payoffs of principals and agents in the Soviet command economy.\udAlternative approaches to the evaluation of R&D failure are outlined. New archival\uddocumentation shows the scale and scope of the Soviet R&D effort in this field. The\udallocation of R&D resources resulted from agents’ horizontal interactions within a\udvertical command hierarchy. Project funding was determined in a context of biased\udinformation, adverse selection, and agents’ rent seeking. Funding was rationed across\udprojects and through time. Budget constraints on individual projects were softened in\udthe presence of sunk costs, but were hardened periodically. There is no evidence that\udrents were intentionally distributed through the Soviet military R&D system to win\udtrust or reward loyalty; the termination of aviation steam power R&D in 1939 despite\udthe sunk costs they represented was timely.