The eastern German economy has experienced a great deal in the five years since German reunification: an unexpectedly profound collapse following the Monetary, Economic and Social Union of July 1990; a massive loss of jobs with resulting social and political consequences; and an increasingly stable...

The events in August in the Soviet Union demonstrated drastically the difficulties faced by the countries of Eastern Europe in the transition to a market-based system. The following article analyzes the specific distoritions in their economies which this process involves. The author argues in...

The policy of reform in the former Eastern Bloc countries is relying on introducing the mechanisms of the market economy. However, the process of putting such changes into practice with concrete measures has to overcome a number of impediments which have so far hardly been considered by the...

The reform programmes of most Eastern European countries have liberalized prices and taken on the task of macroeconomic stabilization, but the formation and implementation of structural policies has largely been neglected so far. What steps should the governments of Eastern Europe take to...

In the economic literature the reasons for recession during the transformation of a planned into a market economy are still debated. The following article sets the arguments in this debate against an interpretation of the stylised facts of the transformation process in Central Eastern Europe...

The economies of Central and Eastern Europe have inherited serious burdens of environmental pollution, while their economic scope for dealing with these is limited. The transition to the market economy offers chances for improvement, but it also brings new environmental problems. How will the...