Reluctant Cold Warriors - Economists and National Security

The academic study of the Soviet economy in the US was founded to help fight the Cold War. Vladimir Kontorovich evaluates how well the new field fulfilled this task, and shows that it largely neglected the military sector, which underpinned the Soviet Cold War effort. Professional norms of economics and political pressures drove researchers to ignore the priorities of their government sponsors and to fundamentally misinterpret their subject.