We challenge the view that Centrally Planned Economies functioned well until the early 1970s, delivering high economic growth and better living standards. Judged by real wages as the most widely used historical living standard indicator, only in the 1970s did Bulgarian living standards surpass...

Der ökonomische und politische Desintegrationsprozeß innerhalb der Russischen Föderation führte zwischen 1990 und 1994 zu einer Halbierung des überregionalen innerrussischen Getreidehandels und deutlichen Rückgängen in der Erzeugung. Aus der europäischen Wirtschaftsgeschichte und den...

The rise of a western-style middle class in many successful emerging economies like China currently is inducing deep structural changes on agricultural world markets and within the global agri-food business. As a result of both higher incomes and concerns over product safety and quality the...

Our purpose here is to challenge the big-bang approach to economic history in which some alleged institutional imposition - a deus machine - is claimed to launch a series of new economic behaviors. This so-called prime mover is then carried forward by the inexorable forces of path dependency to...

Fehlsichtigkeit ist in China unter Kindern aus ländlichen Räumen weit verbreitet. Mehr als 20 Prozent dieser Kinder, die noch in Dörfern leben oder mit ihren Eltern vom Land in die Stadt abgewandert sind, leiden an Kurzsichtigkeit. Eine augenheilkundliche Behandlung erfolgt oft nicht. Seit...

The food industry is one of the most important sectors in the Latvian economy. However, due to its close links to agriculture, the structural crisis in the processing sector is the main obstacle to increasing output, productivity and profitability in the entire agricultural sector. Based on the...

From 1990 to 1994 the economic and political process of disintegration within the Russian Federation halved the domestic trade of grain between the various regions and caused significant reductions in the production. From European economic history and the experience of several developing...

This paper explores the pattern of agricultural productivity across 19th century Prussia to gain new insights on the causes of the 'Little Divergence' between European regions. We argue that access to urban demand was the dominant factor explaining the gradient of agricultural productivity as...

Southeast Europe's countries are often denominated as the 'first developing nations'. Since the end of the 19th century the question of industrialization dominated public economic debates in Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and later on Yugoslavia. However, despite all soaring rhetoric no sustained...

Still in recent research a low productive peasant economy and traditional peasant society are often made responsible for Southeast Europe's economic backwardness prior to 1945. However, the radical change of paradigm after 1960 in the view of peasants as agents of economic growth and of their...