Economic Transition in Central Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States

Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
List of Figures......Page 11
List of Tables......Page 12
Acknowledgements......Page 14
List of Abbreviations......Page 15
Introduction......Page 18
Part I What Happened?......Page 20
Introduction......Page 22
The command economy......Page 23
What went wrong?......Page 25
The final stalemate? A political economy perspective......Page 37
The main components of reform......Page 45
Why stabilization should be accompanied by price liberalization......Page 48
The \'hard\' budget constraint as a necessary condition for adjustment......Page 54
Appendix: Liberalization and institutional reforms: factor analysis applied to EBRD indicators......Page 59
Introduction......Page 66
\'Heterodox\' stabilization: the exchange rate and credibility......Page 67
The initial position: internal and external disequilibria......Page 69
The stabilization package......Page 70
Inconsistency between the elements of reform?......Page 72
Devaluation, stabilization and the fall in output......Page 74
Exchange rates: from stabilization to EMU......Page 77
The global context and the uniqueness of post-Communist privatization: the trade-off between speed and efficiency......Page 83
Privatization objectives: efficiency, finance and political economy......Page 85
Trade-offs among privatization methods and secondary ownership transfers......Page 91
The impact of privatization......Page 96
Privatization and the quality of corporate governance: a snapshot......Page 99
\'Transitional unemployment\' and the flows between labour market states......Page 102
Post-transition labour market equilibria?......Page 111
Empirical econometric evidence......Page 113
Conclusion......Page 114
Part II Why? New Empirical Results......Page 116
Recessions examined......Page 118
The empirical literature......Page 119
The theoretical literature on \'transitional recession\'......Page 120
New empirical results: initial conditions, wars, stabilization, liberalization and the post-Communist slump in output......Page 124
Evaluation of recessions......Page 129
Appendix: Data and estimation results......Page 132
The inheritance......Page 138
Reforms and fiscal imbalance during the transition......Page 140
Liberalization, fiscal revenue and expenditure: some econometric results......Page 141
Appendix: The interplay between institutional reforms and fiscal balance: Poland – a case study......Page 150
Financial intermediation and transition......Page 162
Empirical analysis......Page 167
Conclusion......Page 172
Appendix A: Estimation results: differences between transition economies and others......Page 173
Appendix B: Estimation results: private credit, interest rate spread and broad money......Page 176
Preliminaries: transition as a welfare issue......Page 179
Liberalization: winners and losers......Page 184
Empirical results on the link between political freedom and reforms......Page 193
Conclusion......Page 198
Empirical evidence on the determinants of long- (medium-)term growth......Page 200
Empirical results from panel data: short-run effects......Page 203
Are the results on the link between reforms and growth spurious?......Page 208
Additional new results: reforms, stabilization and political rights......Page 210
Conclusion......Page 214
Final Remarks......Page 216
Bibliography......Page 218
C......Page 227
F......Page 228
I......Page 229
M......Page 230
R......Page 231
U......Page 232
Y......Page 233