As the world approaches the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism, it is worth investigating the costs borne by countries like India that did not become communist but drew heavily on the Soviet model. For three decades after its independence in 1947, India strove for self-sufficiency instead...

It has recently become customary to argue that Russian economic transformation since 1991 has failed because of bad policy advice and mistaken policy choices. Though Russia's performance leaves much to be desired, such criticisms are based on a failure to analyse the real choices available to...

As a result of the program of social, political, and economic reforms called doi moi" (meaning renovation) implemented by the Communist Party in 1986, market forces have been allowed to operate in Vietnam subject to state supervision. The centerpiece of doi moi has been to attract foreign...

The Orange Revolution in the fall of 2004 built great hopes for a better future for Ukraine. However, three years later those hopes have been replaced by disappointment, frustration and confusion. Although progress in the areas of political freedom, pluralism, civil rights and freedom in the...

This paper evaluates the usefulness of business sentiment indicators for forecasting developments in the Chinese real economy. We use data on diffusion indices collected by the People's Bank of China for forecasting industrial production, retail sales and exports. Our bivariate vector...

This paper compares two radically different approaches to transforming an economic system based on central planning and state property into a capitalist system, the neoliberal transition strategy and the state directed transition strategy. Russia s transition since 1992 is examined as an example...

We explain economic growth by both politics, i.e. government activity including spending as well as regulation, and institutional quality and its interaction with politics. This extends previous work on institution building in transition by looking at its impact and, at the same time,...

In this paper we derive the correct solution of optimal closure of the state sector studied in Section 6.4 of Aghion and Blanchard (1994). Aghion and Blanchard only present an 'approximate' solution which entails a constant unemployment rate in what they call a turnpike approximation. We show...

The aim of this study is to assess current economic situation of 28 post-socialist countries in Europe and Asia undergoing systemic transformation towards an open market economy, their macroeconomic policies and the progress of structural reforms. We focus on the situation prevailing in 2008 and...

The aim of this study is to assess current economic situation of 28 post-socialist countries in Europe and Asia undergoing systemic transformation towards an open market economy, their macroeconomic policies and the progress of structural reforms. We focus on the situation seen in 2009 and the...