Among the many contraints facing all participants in the international division of labour in the present decade, some seem to affect centrally planned economies (CPEs) to a greater extent than other countries. The CPEs' additional problems are due, according to Prof. Winiecki, to specific,...

In early 1970 responsibility for the conclusion of trade agreements was transferred from the individual member states to the EC. Since then the EC has been recognized throughout the world as a contractual partner in its own right within this area. Only the Soviet Union and the CMEA are being...

After the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan is the second largest trade partner of the Communist countries as a whole and of the Soviet Union and the largest partner of the People's Republic of China. It has only been in recent years that Japan gained this formidable position in the trade with...

For a time in the mid-1970s, “Third World solidarity” was at its zenith and the prospect of a new international economic order appeared to be within reach. But by the Cancun Summit in 1981 the schism between the oil exporting developing countries and the non-oil exporting developing...

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....

In 1990 the privatisation debate in the ex-socialist countries advanced considerably. By now, the fundamental importance of private property for a market economy and the pitfalls of employee-ownership schemes are rarely disputed. Instead, the need for rapid privatisation and suitable methods of...