The merger of the two German states brings together countries with divergent economic systems, different trade orientations and a rift in terms of wealth. Transforming the East German system into a social market economy raises enormous internal and external adjustment problems in a period in...

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...

When German unification took place in 1990, the government was optimistic that the process of closing the economic gap between the two Germanies would be a brief one. However, economic unification has turned out to be more costly and much more complex than anticipated. But on the other hand it...