All formerly centrally planned economies record very substantial declines in their social products. The largest drops in production are recorded in Poland and in east Germany (the former GDR), that is, in those countries where the most radical steps towards a market economy were taken in 1990....

Various market-type reforms have been introduced into the economies of Eastern Europe in recent years. These have often been warmly applauded in the West, but their success so far has been at best marginal. Without radical changes in the fundamentals of the Soviet-type economic system such...

China's new economic policy made headlines in December 1984 when a leading article in the People's Daily expressed the previously unthinkable opinion that the teachings of Marx and Engels could not be expected to solve all of China's present problems. What have been the main characteristics of...

At the end of the 1970s there occurred a re-orientation of development policy in the People's Republic of China. Changes were introduced in the sectoral development priorities, the guiding principles of the State's incomes and foreign trade policies and in the organization of agricultural...