During the early 1960s party leaders were increasingly desperate to slow down or even reverse the widening gap in economic performance and general prosperity between socialist East Germany and capitalist West Germany. One response was to try and restrict economic emigration from east to west. Another involved economic reforms at home which would focus more on profitability and decentralising decision making. The so-called New Economic System was formally launched in 1963. Western sources tend to see it as a belated acceptance of western-style economic liberal economics. The way in which it was implemented (or was not) during the 1960s and 1970s suggest it was no such thing. Walter Ulbricht seems always to have been, at most, a deeply reluctant convert to inconvenient economic truths. Harry Nick engaged with commitment in the debates surrounding the New Economic System, and what it should mean in terms of economic planning and management of the national economy. He saw and articulated an acute need for "economic reform in the context of genuine socialism". To the extent that his vision was never realised, he continued to articulate it, appropriately updated, long after the increasingly obvious bankruptcy of the East German economy had effectively put an end to the East German dictator-state during 1989&lt;a href="1990%20East%20German%20general%20election"&gt;/90&lt;/a&gt;.