Who is Sailau Baizakov? Sailau Baizakov is a Doctor of Economic Sciences. Since 1964, he worked as a senior economist, head of a research lab, department head, and deputy director at the Economic Research Institute under the State Planning Committee of the Kazakh SSR. He defended his PhD dissertation in 1968 and became a Doctor of Economics in 1974. He authored more than 200 scientific works, including 12 monographs.
He was an active member of the International Union of Economists, the International Public Academy of Environmental Safety, the International Academy of Informatization, the International Academy of Management, the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and a member of the Academic Union of Oxford (UK).
Baizakov was one of the few Kazakh scholars who did not just analyze statistics – he tried to build a new way of thinking about the economy. He worked in the 1990s and 2000s, when Kazakhstan was searching for its path in a new market economy and a changing global order. While people around him argued about taxes versus subsidies, import versus export, liberalism versus planning, Baizakov proposed a third way: an economy measured not only by what we produce, but howwe produce it, how efficient it is, and what purpose it serves.
How it all began: “The Bay paradox”: Baizakov started with a simple story. In the 1990s, a Honda worker in Japan spent about 10.9 hours assembling a car. An American worker needed 16 hours. Japanese labor was more expensive ($18 per hour vs. $16 in the US), yet the final price of a Japanese car was still lower.
How could that be? American economists, including Michael Bay, called this a “paradox”: production efficiency is shaped not just by labor cost, but by labor productivity. Higher wages can still result in lower overall production costs if workers produce more in less time. Baizakov offered another explanation: The real issue is how we measure value. Unless a society knows the true value of its own labor, it cannot understand the true value of its goods and services.
What Is the сore of Baizakov’s theory? Baizakov proposed a model that views the economy as three interconnected layers:
1. Technological layer – what we produce and how we produce it.
2. Financial–monetary layer – how this affects money, prices, and purchasing power.
3. Social–political layer – how it influences stability, fairness, and society as a whole.
He introduced the idea of true cost – not the market price, but the real cost of a product, including labor, knowledge, innovation, and all resources involved.
A formula that changes everything: Baizakov’s main equation looks like this:
t × X = T × Y
where:
- t – direct labor spent on producing a single product (in person-hours)
- X – total cost of that product
- T – total labor used in the entire economy
- Y – total national income
This formula connects microeconomics and macroeconomics. It allows us to measure the efficiency of a country, not just its growth.
Why his ideas matter today
1) Growth on paper ≠ real well-being
GDP does not reflect environmental damage, resource depletion, income inequality, or quality of life. Baizakov’s logic offers a more realistic way to evaluate long-term development.
2) Inefficient public spending
Governments spend billions on subsidies and programs, but often cannot measure their real impact. Baizakov’s model helps compare public investments with their true outcomes – not only in money, but in innovation, labor productivity, and sustainability.
3) Inflation and devaluation are symptoms, not causes
Prices and exchange rates are usually treated as simple statistics. Baizakov viewed prices as a mirror of the system’s deeper inefficiencies.
4) Green economy exists mostly in speeches, not practice
His approach already included the idea of “green efficiency” – using fewer resources while improving quality. This is the real foundation of ESG economics.
What would Baizakov say today? “Growth for the sake of growth is not an economy. It is a race to nowhere. We must measure what truly creates value – intelligence, technology, and careful use of resources.”
What his approach gives us
- A tool to measure efficiency across sectors and the whole economy.
- Support for a green transition without sacrificing economic indicators.
- A clear connection between scientific methods and real markets.
- A new way to evaluate state programs based on logic, not bureaucracy.
Why we need his ideas now
We live in a time of global turbulence: climate change, energy shocks, inflation, inequality. Classical economic tools often react too slowly. Baizakov offered a system that unites efficiency and fairness, technology and reality, monetary indicators and real values. His ideas never became outdated – they were simply ahead of their time. And now, their time has finally come.
Lina Yegil kizi, expert of the EconomyKZ.org portal
