Output decline has been a feature of the transition economies in the initial post-communist period, including in those countries that belonged to the former Soviet Union. However, explanations for the decline and its persistence have not been easy to find, and mostly they have focussed upon...

Many of the states of the former Soviet Union have experienced a dramatic collapse of output during transition, which has not yet been reversed in a sustainable way. The economics of disorganization, proposed by Blanchard (1997) and tested empirically by Blanchard and Kremer (1997), reasons that...