Feldman–Mahalanobis model

The Feldman–Mahalanobis model is a Marxist model of economic development, created independently by Soviet economist Grigory Feldman in 1928 and Indian statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in 1953. Mahalanobis became essentially the key economist of India's Second Five Year Plan, becoming subject to much of India's most dramatic economic debates.

The essence of the model is a shift in the pattern of industrial investment towards building up a domestic consumption goods sector. Thus the strategy suggests in order to reach a high standard in consumption, investment in building a capacity in the production of capital goods is firstly needed. A high enough capacity in the capital goods sector expands in the long-run the nation's consumer-goods production capacity.

This distinction between the two different types of goods was a clearer formulation of Marx's ideas in Das Kapital, and also helped people to better understand the extent of the trade off between the levels of immediate and future consumption. These ideas were first introduced in 1928 by Feldman, then an economist working for the GOSPLAN planning commission, where he presented theoretical arguments of a two-department scheme of growth. There is no evidence that Mahalanobis knew of Feldman's approach, being kept behind the borders of the USSR.