 Plant Economy The plant economy is a type of economic system where investment and the application of capital goods take place according to economy-wide economic and production plans. The plant economy may use centralized, decentralized or participatory forms of economic planning. The command economy or administrative command economy is any of the nominal plant economies of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. These terms highlight the central role of hierarchical administration in guiding the application of resources in these economic systems as opposed to plant coordination. Plant economies are usually associated with Soviet-type central planning, which involves centralized state planning and administrative decision-making. In command economies, important allocation decisions are made by government authorities and are imposed by law. Plant economies contrast with unplanned economies, specifically market economies, where autonomous firms operating in markets make decisions about production, distribution, pricing and investment. Market economies that use indicative planning are sometimes referred to as planned market economies. The traditional conception of socialism involves the integration of socially-owned economic enterprises via some form of planning with direct calculation substituting factor markets. As such, the concept of a planned economy is often associated with socialism and with socialist planning. More recent approaches to socialist planning and allocation have come from some economists and computer scientists proposing planning mechanisms based on advances in computer science and information technology.