The report examines how courts have performed, and reveals their impact on public opinion and the business environment. It provides insight into linkages among reforms as well as linkages between reforms and public demand for a fair judiciary. The authors show that while each country presents...

Since its velvet revolution in late 1989, the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR) has moved steadily to create the conditions for developing a private market economy. Not only has the CSFR freed up the conditions for entry of new private firms, but it has also taken far-reaching steps to...

The economies of Central and Eastern Europe are in the midst of a historic transition from central planning and state ownership to development of a market-driven private sector. This transition requires comprehensive changes in"rules of the game"- including the legal framework for economic...

As socialist countries move toward market systems, fiscal policy is an important part of their reform agenda. First, they need to reorient public spending to focus more on the provision of"public"goods. Second, they need to adopt more selective, predictable, and nondiscretionary means to finance...

Institutional weakness is a critical constraint to economic development. The goal of this paper is to review the design of recent Bank projects to assess the quality of their institutional development (ID) components and the factors that may affect that quality. A major focus is Bank staffing...

The basic economic challenge in the transition from socialism to capitalism is creating incentive structures and institutions that promote enterprise change and restructuring. This is the motivation for most of the reforms debated during the transition - whether privatization, demonopolization,...