This paper looks at the history of money and its modern form from a scientific and mathematical point of view. The approach here is to emphasize simplicity. A straightforward model and algebraic formula for a large economy analogous to the ideal gas law of thermodynamics is proposed. It may be...

This paper examines the role of money in market and centrally planned economies. It then proposes a program and sequence of institutional, macroeconomic and monetary reform aimed at achieving a stable transition. An egalitarian redistribution of the state's custodial assets to its citizens is...

After the demise of “real” socialism and the decline of “western” socialism, socialism can be salvaged as a social preference system oriented towards equality and social justice, to be implemented without systemic constraints in the organizational and institutional sense. At the same...

This paper looks at public support for the creation of a market economy in Eastern Europe. As a data base, the Central and Eastern Eurobarometers surveys are employed, covering up to 21 countries over a time period of 1990-96 and totalling more than 100000 observations on individuals. The...

The Soviet Union and the nations of Eastern Europe are undergoing a historically unprecedented restructuring as they move inexorably from centrally planned economies toward market economies. This historic transition must be guided by a coherent set of stabilization policies to reduce the threat...

This paper examines the question of whether a communist nation, characterized by state ownership of the means of production and a centrally planned command system of allocation can be transformed into an efficient market oriented economy without fully compromising the socialist ideals of an...

This paper develops a proxy measure of the inequality of influence on the basis of survey evidence from 2002 Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) conducted among 6,500 firms in 27 transition countries. We refer to the resulting inequality as crony bias in the political...

Based on the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) of firms in transition countries, which unbundles corruption to measure different types of corrupt transactions and provide detailed information on the characteristics and performance of firms, we find that: i)...

This paper examines why some transitions are more successful than others by focusing attention on the role of productive, protective and predatory behaviors from the perspective of the new institutional economics. Many transition economies are characterized by a fundamental inconsistency between...

The countries of the world have public finance systems that can generally be broken down into three categories. Advanced western democracies (and Japan) have long-established, often complex systems. Emerging economies such as those in Eastern Europe and China are in the process of moving from...