Background
MARCZEWSKI, Jan Witold was born in 1908 in Warsaw, Poland.
MARCZEWSKI, Jan Witold was born in 1908 in Warsaw, Poland.
Baccalauréat (Maths, and Philosophy) Nancy, France, 1926. Licence Law, Strasbourg University, 1929. Doctor Law, University Paris, 1941.
Agrégation, Paris,
1950.
Polish Diplomatic Service, Strasbourg, 1926-1932, Bucharest, 1933-1936, Warsaw, 1937, Brussels, 193740. Polish Army, France, 1940-1945. Research Director, Institute, Institution Applied Economics, Paris, 1946-1950.
Consultant, Organisation for Economic Company-operation and Development, Paris, 1949-1950.
Professor, University Caen, France, 1950-1959. Professor, University Saarbrücken, France, 1950-1952.
Professor, Institute, Institution Political Sciences, Paris, 1950-1958. Research Director Eastern Europe, Foundation Political Sciences, Paris, 1950-1958.
Professor, University Paris I, 1959-1977.
Director, Planning and National Accounts Laboratory, University Paris I, 1959-1977. Retired Honorary Professor of Economics, University Paris I, Pantheon-Sorbonne, France, since 1977. Editor, Europe de l’Est et Union Soviétique, 1957-1958.
International Consultant, Soviet Studies, 1976.
As one of the founders of the French National Accounts System, Le Revenu National, and a member of the National Income Unit of the Organisation for Economic Company-operation and Development in Cambridge, I tried to take the advantage of the doubleentry accounting relations for research in economic history. Contrary to Simon Kuznets, who as far as possible tended to convert the historically observed relations into ‘economic laws’, I stressed the importance of ‘historical variables’, which are exogeneous to the economic system and contribute to determine its historically observable results.
Despite the spectacular advance of mathematical programming, centralised economic planning is unable to solve the contradiction between the need for the maximal adaptability to the changing conditions of the world economy and the unavoidable rigidity of a centralised system of command. Considered as a system of economic circuits (monetary and real), world economic development is limited by the constraints of solidarity, liquidity and profitability, which cannot be altered without a radical change in the reciprocal East-West and North-South relations and in the monetary and economic policies of particular countries.