This paper examines the indirect role the IMF plays in combating corruption in the Baltic and CIS countries by promoting structural reforms that help improve economic governance and thus reduce opportunities for rent-seeking behavior. The analysis draws on examples of actual experience with...

The U.S.S.R., the German Democratic Republic, Poland (in the 1970s), and Hungary represent within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) a spectrum of the extent to which decisions on foreign trade have been decentralized and the exchange rate has taken on a direct role in determining...

This paper analyzes the ways in which macroeconomic disequilibrium may be generated, propagated, and finally brought under control in planned economies. In the "classical" centrally planned economy (CPE), policymakers favor quantity adjustments rather than price adjustments in confronting...

The waves of reform and restructuring now engulfing most of Eastern Europe did not begin from the same starting point in each country. While they all share a common economic legacy—the traditional Soviet-type centrally planned economy—some countries had been experimenting with limited forms...

Drawing on recent examples of corruptionin the Baltics and former Soviet Union, this pamphlet analyzes the links between governance and corruption, and emphasizes the high economic cost that corruption exacts. The pamphlet outlines how the IMF is working with the countries of the former Soviet...