Although the Soviet Union's centrally planned economic system played a significant role in world economic growth and modernization, it ultimately failed to compete with market forms of economic organization. Despite unavailing efforts at reform, it has now been abandoned, as the republics of the former USSR move painfully toward the market. In The Failure of Soviet Economic Planning: System, Performance, Reform Robert W. Campbell, one of the most respected U.S. specialists on the economy of the former Soviet Union, probes the evolution, behavior, and fatal weaknesses of the Soviet administrative-command economy.