History glossary
Planned economy
an economy in which central authorities direct production, labor, distribution, or resource use.
- Category
- Economic concept
What it means
A planned economy is one where central institutions make major decisions about labor, resources, production, and distribution. Historians sometimes use the phrase cautiously for highly managed ancient systems such as Ur III, where surviving records show extensive state tracking of workers, rations, goods, and output.
Related terms
Stories using this term
The World After The Cold War
From the fall of the Soviet Union to the rise of China and global terrorism, this story traces the turbulent reshaping of the international order after 1991.
Mesopotamia
Ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, was one of the birthplaces of urban civilisation. In this Tigris and Euphrates civilization, communities built some of the first cities, developed cuneiform writing, organised law codes, and created early empires. From Sumer and Akkad to Babylon and Assyria, this history of Mesopotamia shows how farming, irrigation, temples, kingship, trade, and record-keeping helped create the structures of complex society. It also works as a Mesopotamia timeline and Mesopotamia civilization overview, with clear Mesopotamia facts tracing how Mesopotamian civilization grew from villages into states and empires.
