Economic transition in Central Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States

• List of Figures
• p. x

• List of Tables
• p. xi

• Acknowledgements
• p. xiii

• List of Abbreviations
• p. xiv

• Introduction
• p. xvii

• Part I
• What Happened?

• 1
• The Old Regime and the Opening Balance of Transition
• p. 3

• Introduction
• p. 3

• The command economy
• p. 4

• What went wrong?
• p. 6

• The final stalemate? A political economy perspective
• p. 18

• 2
• The Transition Programme: Interdependence between the Key Components
• p. 26

• The main components of reform
• p. 26

• Why stabilization should be accompanied by price liberalization
• p. 29

• The 'hard' budget constraint as a necessary condition for adjustment
• p. 35

• Appendix
• Liberalization and institutional reforms: factor analysis applied to EBRD indicators
• p. 40

• 3
• Stabilization
• p. 47

• Introduction
• p. 47

• 'Heterodox' stabilization: the exchange rate and credibility
• p. 48

• The initial position: internal and external disequilibria
• p. 50

• The stabilization package
• p. 51

• Inconsistency between the elements of reform?
• p. 53

• Devaluation, stabilization and the fall in output
• p. 55

• Exchange rates: from stabilization to EMU
• p. 58

• 4
• Privatization: The Trade-Offs between Speed, Efficiency and Distribution
• p. 64

• The global context and the uniqueness of post-Communist privatization: the trade-off between speed and efficiency
• p. 64

• Privatization objectives: efficiency, finance and political economy
• p. 66

• Trade-offs among privatization methods and secondary ownership transfers
• p. 72

• The impact of privatization
• p. 77

• Privatization and the quality of corporate governance: a snapshot
• p. 80

• 5
• Unemployment Paths and Restructuring
• p. 83

• 'Transitional unemployment' and the flows between labour market states
• p. 83

• Post-transition labour market equilibria?
• p. 92

• Empirical econometric evidence
• p. 94

• Conclusion
• p. 95

• Part II
• Why? New Empirical Results

• 6
• Post-Communist Recessions Re-Examined
• p. 99

• Recessions examined
• p. 99

• The empirical literature
• p. 100

• The theoretical literature on 'transitional recession'
• p. 101

• New empirical results: initial conditions, wars, stabilization, liberalization and the post-Communist slump in output
• p. 105

• Evaluation of recessions
• p. 110

• Appendix
• Data and estimation results
• p. 113

• 7
• Liberalization and Public Finance
• p. 119

• The inheritance
• p. 119

• Reforms and fiscal imbalance during the transition
• p. 121

• Liberalization, fiscal revenue and expenditure: some econometric results
• p. 122

• Appendix
• The interplay between institutional reforms and fiscal balance: Poland - a case study
• p. 131

• 8
• The Order of Financial Liberalization
• p. 143

• Financial intermediation and transition
• p. 143

• Empirical analysis
• p. 148

• Conclusion
• p. 153

• Appendix A
• Estimation results: differences between transition economies and others
• p. 154

• Appendix B
• Estimation results: private credit, interest rate spread and broad money
• p. 157

• 9
• Democracy and Reform
• p. 160

• Preliminaries: transition as a welfare issue
• p. 160

• Liberalization: winners and losers
• p. 165

• Empirical results on the link between political freedom and reforms
• p. 174

• Conclusion
• p. 179

• 10
• Growth and Transition
• p. 181

• Empirical evidence on the determinants of long- (medium-) term growth
• p. 181

• Empirical results from panel data: short-run effects
• p. 184

• Are the results on the link between reforms and growth spurious?
• p. 189

• Additional new results: reforms, stabilization and political rights
• p. 191

• Conclusion
• p. 195

• Final Remarks
• p. 197

• Bibliography
• p. 199

• Index
• p. 208