This book, written on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, addresses three questions that relate to recession, recovery, and reform, respectively, in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) transition countries. Did the transition from a command to a market economy and...

The main objective of the Life in Transition Survey (LiTS) was to assess the impact of transition on people, and so the survey questionnaire covered four main themes. First, it collected personal information on aspects of material well-being, including household expenditures, possession of...

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall the transition countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have witnessed dramatic changes in outputs, the nature of jobs, standards of living, patterns of trade and the quality of education and health services. Yet, during much of this period,...

This book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter one is an overview. Chapter two reviews South Asia's recent track record with regard to the quantity and quality of job creation. It traces the relationship of such job creation mostly to overall economic growth and attempts to answer what needs...

This paper uses firm-level data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys to study the process of convergence of transition countries with developed market economies. The study focuses on competition and market structure, finance and the structure of lending to firms, and...

Two decades since the fall of the Berlin wall, Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, is experiencing the deepest contraction and is expected to see the weakest recovery in output among all emerging and developing economy regions a result of the global financial and economic...

Intro -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Overview -- Part 1 The First Decade in Transition -- How Did Transition Economies Perform? -- Explaining Variation in Output Performance -- Part 2 Policy and Institutional Challenges Ahead -- The Quest for Growth -- Discipline and Encouragement...

This paper uses firm-level data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys to study the process of convergence of transition countries with developed market economies. The study focuses on competition and market structure, finance and the structure of lending to firms, and...