This paper provides an overview of public expenditures on education and healthcare in Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine and some other countries of the former Soviet Union before and during the global financial crisis. Before the crisis, the governments of these countries...

The conventional discussion of the international financial crisis that erupted in the summer of 2007 is that few professional economists saw it coming, nor anticipated its ferocity in devastating the US and European economies and financial systems, leading to civil unrest and fears of greater...