Models and policy: the dialogue between model builder and planner

Abstract

The first mathematical planning models appeared in Hungary in 1957-58. Economy-wide and sector planning, both for the medium and long term, had already been going on in Hungary for about a decade but exclusively relying on traditional, non-mathematical methods. The scale of planning could be described by two values: The number of people working in the machinery of planning. Hungary is a small country of ten million people, before the appearance of mathematical planning, the central planning office had a payroll of 500 to 800. In addition, every ministry, the directorate of every industrial brunch, every producing company, and every local administrative authority had a planning office. Altogether, tens of thousands of people were busy planning; Secondly, the number of parameters used in the documentation of the five-year plan. There is no accurate count, but a crude estimate of the order of magnitude would be several Million.