While output declined in virtually all transition economies in the initial years, the speed and extent of the recovery that followed has varied widely across these countries. The contrast between the more and less successfull transitions, the latter largely in former Soviet Union, raises many...

This paper revisits the early empirical literature on economic growth in transition economies, with particular focus on fiscal policy variables-fiscal balance and the size of government. The baseline model uses a parsimonious specification, drawn from Fischer and Sahay (2000), of economic growth...

This paper examines the structure and performance of the services sector in Eastern European and Central Asian countries during 1997-2004. Services represent an increasing share of total value added and employment with the major sub-sectors being wholesale trade, retail trade, inland transport,...

The challenge for labor market policy in the transition economies has been to redress the sharp drops in employment and rises in unemployment in a way that fosters the creation of productive jobs. The authors first document the magnitude and productivity of job and worker reallocation. Then they...

The paper reviews labor market developments in the transition economies of Europe and Central Asia. It argues that the scarcity of productive job opportunities and the growing labor market segmentation are the two main labor market problems facing the transition economies. In the European...

This paper decomposes changes in inequality, which has in general been increasing in the transition economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, both by income source and socio-economic group, with a view to understanding the determinants of inequality and assessing how it might...

Its highly fragmented structure of local governments and serious horizontal fiscal imbalances make Switzerland a surprisingly powerful model for Eastern European countries that are currently facing the challenge of fiscal decentralization. In spite of the substantial differences in the tradition...

Major changes have occurred in the structure of former centrally planned economies, including a sharp rise in the share of services in GDP, employment, and international transactions. However, large differences exist across transition economies with respect to services intensity and services...

The authors review the role of land policies in the evolving farm structure of transition countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). They show how different policies for land property rights, degrees of control of land rental and sale markets,...