Transition To The Market Economy

Download or read book Economies in Transition written by Wing Thye Woo and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1994, the Asia Foundation's Center for Asian Pacific Affairs began a two-year project to compare the transitions of selected East European and Asian economies from centrally-planned communist systems to market economies. The goal was to shed light on the transition process through an understanding of the underlying economic and institutional dynamics. This volume is the culmination of that project.The volume is divided into three parts. In the first part, an overview, the editors review the authors' findings and highlight major themes. The second part looks closely at the transition process in seven Asian and East European economies: China, Vietnam, Mongolia, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The third part contains six comparative studies that explore key elements of the transition process. The papers incorporate feedback obtained from meetings with cabinet members and high government officials, conferences, and seminars in Prague, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Beijing, Ulan Bator, and Washington, D.C. Contributors Leszek Balcerowicz, Barbara Blaszczyk, Peter Boone, Yuan Zheng Cao, Bruce Comer, Marek Dabrowski, Georges de Menil, Daniel C. Esty, Gang Fan, Boris Federov, Roman Frydman, Carol Graham, Stephen Parker, Andrzej Rapaczynski, James Riedel, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Baavaa Tarvaa, Vinod Thomas, Gavin Tritt, Adiya Tsend, Enkhbold Tsendjav, Joel Turkewitz, Narantsetseg Unenburen, Yan Wang, Wing Thye Woo

Download or read book How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy written by Anders Åslund and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Europe's old nations steeped in history, Ukraine is today an undisputed independent state. It is a democracy and has transformed into a market economy with predominant private ownership. Ukraine's postcommunist transition has been one of the most protracted and socially costly, but it has taken the country to a desirable destination. Åslund's vivid account of Ukraine's journey begins with a brief background, where he discusses the implications of Ukraine's history, the awakening of society because of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, the early democratization, and the impact of the ill-fated Soviet economic reforms. He then turns to the reign of President Leonid Kravchuk from 1991 to 1994, the only salient achievement of which was nation-building, while the economy collapsed in the midst of hyperinflation. The first two years of Leonid Kuchma's presidency, from 1994 to 1996, were characterized by substantial achievements, notably financial stabilization and mass privatization. The period 1996–99 was a miserable period of policy stagnation, rent seeking, and continued economic decline. In 2000 hope returned to Ukraine. Viktor Yushchenko became prime minister and launched vigorous reforms to cleanse the economy from corruption, and economic growth returned. The ensuing period, 2001–04, amounted to a competitive oligarchy. It was quite pluralist, although repression increased. Economic growth was high. The year 2004 witnessed the most joyful period in Ukraine, the Orange Revolution, which represented Ukraine's democratic breakthrough, with Yushchenko as its hero. The postrevolution period, however, has been characterized by great domestic political instability; a renewed, explicit Russian threat to Ukraine's sovereignty; and a severe financial crisis. The answers to these challenges lie in how soon the European Union fully recognizes Ukraine's long-expressed identity as a European state, how swiftly Ukraine improves its malfunctioning constitutional order, and how promptly it addresses corruption.

Download or read book The Economic Transition in Myanmar After 1988 written by Kōichi Fujita and published by NUS Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many years Myanmar operated an inward-looking economic system built on import substitution. Ultimately this policy failed, leaving behind inefficient state economic enterprises and widespread poverty. Political unrest in 1988 led a newly installed military government to liberalize the economy, opening it to foreign investment and private participation in trade. This move towards a market economy was in line with world-wide trends, but political instability forced the country to follow a course different from neighboring countries. By analyzing economic policies and performance across the economic spectrum, this book presents an overall picture of economic development in Myanmar between 1988 and the early 2000s. The authors synthesize both macro and micro level data to overcome some of the limitations of unreliable national statistics, and show how the government attempted to deal with two key issues it faced. The first was how to reform the inefficient socialistic economic system in conformity with a market economy, and the second was how to develop the agricultural and underdeveloped economy to alleviate mass poverty.

Download or read book Poland's Jump to the Market Economy written by Jeffrey Sachs and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Poland's jump to the Market Economy, Jeffrey Sachs provides an insider's analysis of the political events and economic strategy behind the country's swift transition to capitalism and democracy. The greatest challenges to economic reform, Sachs points out, have been primarily political in nature, rather than social or even economic.Sachs reviews Poland's striking progress since the start of the economic reforms three years ago, which he helped to design. He discusses the gains - more than half of employment and GDP is now in the private sector, exports to Western Europe have more than doubled, and economic growth and confidence are returning - as well as the serious problems that remain - high unemployment, a chronic fiscal deficit, the slow pace of privatization of large industrial enterprises, and the fragility of multiparty coalition governments.Sachs points out that leadership is crucial to economic reform in a newly democratic setting, as is the West's timely economic assistance. In Poland's case, the Zloty Stabilization Fund and the two-stage debt cancellation have been essential to keeping the reform program on track.Poland's example has had a powerful impact on reforms throughout the region, including the former Soviet Union, and has done much to dispel the fear that the citizens themselves, allegedly made lazy by decades of socialism, would reject the competitive rigors of a market economy. Overall, Sachs remains firmly convinced of the potential for successful economic reforms. in Poland and the rest of the region.Jeffrey Sachs is Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade at Harvard University, and has been an economic advisor to more than a dozen countries around the world, including Bolivia, Mongolia, Poland, and Russia.

Download or read book The Economics of Transition written by Marie Lavigne and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1995 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Substantially revised and updated, this new edition of a highly acclaimed text is both a guide and a critical analysis. Benefiting from the additional insights gained through new data and new developments, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the transition to the market economy taking place in Russia and Eastern Europe. The second edition also has expanded coverage of the enlargement of the European Union to the East and its increasing influence on the reintegration of this region into the world economy." "The book provides a contemporary comparative approach to the process of transformation and supplies a large amount of factual and statistical information. Of great interest to students, specialists and practitioners, the book's nontechnical approach also makes it appropriate for all those interested in the issues of transition."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Privatization in the Transition to a Market Economy written by John S. Earle and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 1993 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Privatization policies are the centrepiece of the historically unique transformation of the centrally planned, into market economies. Yet the peculiarities of the privatization process in Eastern Europe are little understood in the West because of differences in historical, socio-political and economic contexts relative to Western experience. Most research on privatization in the West is rather theoretical and thus pays insufficient attention to these contexts, perhaps because their importance is not widely appreciated and because there has been little information about them available. Moreover, the significant differences among East European countries in contexts and in policies are not well-understood even within the region, again because of a lack of information.

Download or read book Challenges for Russian Economic Reform written by Alan Smith and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transition to a market economy proves to be far more difficult in Russia than in the former centrally planned economies of eastern Europe. The Russian economy continues to face serious problems, including substantial inflationary pressures, falling output, and capital flight. The most positive aspect of the transition has been the relatively fast pace of privatization. Challenges for Russian Economic Reform contains papers published by the post-Soviet Business Forum at the Royal Institute of International Affairs that have been revised for this volume. The contributers, specalists in Russian economic affairs, examine the principal economic and institutional factors that have hindered transformation in Russia. The sheer size of the country has complicated the problem of exposing domestic producers to foreign competition and has weakened the ability of central authorities to control the regions. Economic stabilization has been hampered by the difficulties in establishing sound economic relations with the former Soviet republics. David Dyker and Michael Barrow analyze the problems of monopoly and competition policy in Russia. Philip Hanson assesses the obstacles to economic stabilization posed by regional economic interests and examines regional diversity in reform implementation. Michael Kaser examines the problems of privatization by regions and sectors in Russia and the CIS and the institutional obstacles encountered by foreign investors. Alan Smith explores the problems created by the breakup of traditional trade and payment relations with the non-Russian republics of the former Soviet Union and bilateral trade links with Eastern Europe. He also provides an overall assessment of Russian economic performance since the collapse of communism.