Japanese planners scrapped their first five-year plan because growth outpaced it

Evidence

35. Ludwig von Mises seconded the idea of emphasizing the enormous importance of foreign private investment that was not accounted for in Ricardo’s trade theory, and Kiuchi reported that planners in Japan had to scrap the first five-year plan because the economy grew much faster than planned (MPS Quarterly 1, 1959, 20 and 15, respectively). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1371

Categorization

• CANDY: A delightfully ironic tidbit: central planners had to abandon their plan because the economy outperformed it — good fun for explaining why planning models lag reality.
• XREF: Connects to Keynesian/planning debates and the reader’s work on economic institutions; also resonates with broader literature on planned economies versus market dynamism.