Progress in achieving institutional changes should be evaluated through the prism of their influence on the development abilities of the relevant country. In Poland, during 20 years of comprehensive systemic shift, GDP increased more than in any other postsocialist country. To judge the...

We examine the case of the Czech Republic, which has been frequently cited as one of the most successful cases of transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Despite the costs related to the break-up of Czechoslovakia in late 1992 and 1993, the immediate consequences were quickly...

Why many transition economies succeeded by pursuing policies that are so different from the radical economic liberalization (shock therapy) that is normally credited for the economic success of central European countries? First, optimal policies are context dependent, they are specific for each...

This paper uses individual-level data to characterize economy-wide job creation and destruction during periods of massive structural adjustment. We contrast the gradualist Czech and the rapid Estonian approach to the destruction of the communist economy to provide evidence on selected...

We analyze how the threat of a potential future regime shift affects optimal management. We use a simple general growth model to analyze four cases that involve combinations of stock collapse versus changes in system dynamics, and exogenous versus endogenous probabilities of regime shift. Prior...

The transition process in Central and Eastern Europe was associated with growing environmental awareness. This paper analyses the determinants of Pollution Abatement and Control Expenditure (PACE) at plant level in the case of Romania using survey data and a Multilevel Regression Model (MRM)....

The paper presents an error-correction model of factor demand and output, analysing the effects of a change in relative factor prices on investment, employment and output in the eastern German manufacturing sector. The principal aim is twofold: first, to examine if the large amounts of capital...

The main points of this paper are that the case for transitional import barriers for the EMEs is very weak; neither a discriminatory regional payments union nor a uniform import tariff nor a differentiated tariff schedule designed in accordance with the presumed adjustment difficulties are...