With the revolutions in Eastern Europe since mid-1989, two main transformations are envisaged: pluralistic political democracy and a market economy based largely on private property and self-interest. One element that straddles those two objectives is what to do with state-owned property during the transition from a planned to a market environment. This work looks at the economic goals that may be pursued in various ways: by taking the state out of the allocation of the service streams of existing capital assets in general and state-owned enterprise in particular. It advocates the urgency of taking politics out of resource allocation. Since this cannot be done through divestment, particularly for large assets, it is imperative that alternatives be put in place at the earliest possible opportunity in the economic transformation. For petty assets (such housing, small shops, handicrafts and restaurants) quick divestment is desirable. For other assets, the principal agent problem will need to be taken care of by investing management with the task of acting in the interest of real owders.

1. Backdrop to the payments constraint.- 2. Consensual transition policies.- 3. Regional cooperation and economic reform.- 4. Backdrop to the proposal to create a payments union.- 5. Toward convertibility through a payments union.- 6. Organization.- 1. The prevailing socioeconomic situation.- 1. Problems of changing Eastern European societies.- 2. The current socioeconomic situation in Eastern Europe.- 3. The drift of the reform debate.- 4. The nature of the payments problem.- 5. Shocks of mutating trade and payment regimes.- 6. Western assistance to combat liquidity shortage.- 2. The collapse and dissolution of the CMEA.- 1. The CMEA's demise.- 2. CMEA reform discussions.- 3. Salient obstacles to buoyant intragroup interactions.- 4. Reforming the trade and payment regimes.- 5. Balance-of-payments constraints and a payments union.- 3. Economic union in Eastern Europe.- 1. The outlook for economic union at this juncture.- 2. The desirability of economic union.- 3. Theoretical merits of a customs union.- 4. Practical problems and economic union.- 5. Linking a payments facility with an economic union.- 6. Key features of a payments union.- 4. Paths to convertibility.- 1. The global economy at Bretton Woods.- 2. On currency convertibility.- 3. Possible roads to convertibility.- 4. Western Europe's return to convertibility.- 5. Marketization, transition, and convertibility.- 1. The national trade and payment regimes.- 2. The CMEA trade and payment regimes.- 3. Marketization and convertibility.- 4. Exchange rates.- 6. Toward a payments union for Eastern Europe?.- 5. Technical aspects of a payments union.- 1. Overall conceptualization of the CEPU.- 2. Payments problems and a regional payments unions.- 3. Technical issues of a payments union.- 1. The clearing agent.- 2. Techniques of accounting.- 3. Prior imbalances and loans.- 4. Publicity.- 5. The question of asymmetry.- 6. Quotas and access to credits.- 7. Adjustment rules.- 8. Macroeconomic surveillance.- 9. Interest-rate policies.- 10. Capital cost.- 11. Duration.- 4. A hypothetical capital fund.- 5. A payments union with the Soviet Union?.- 6. Macroeconomic surveillance and the transition.- 1. Macroeconomic responses in a payments union.- 2. Adjustment under traditional and modified planning.- 1. Adjustment in the traditional CPE.- 2. Adjustment in an MPE.- 3. Standard adjustment policies and the PETs.- 4. Fund-type adjustment programs and the PETs.- 5. CEPU adjustment, commercial policy, and diplomacy.- 6. Other issues of managing a payments union.- 7. Downside risks of a CEPU.- 1. Backdrop to the debate.- 2. The rump order of priority.- 3. General arguments against payments unions.- 1. Key aspects of a payments union.- 2. The starting conditions of potential participants.- 3. Directions of desirable progress.- 4. Comments on the CEPU and their merits.- 5. An evalution of the criticisms.- 1. Emotional and political objections.- 2. Immediate full convertibility and global integration.- 3. A CEPU is too small and a CEEU wrong.- 4. Inappropriateness of present trade patterns.- 5. Too expensive, undesired, and too slow.- 8. Enlarging the European economic space.- 1. The basic preoccupations of European integration.- 2. What needs to be bridged?.- 3. On the transition to ME status.- 1. Creating markets with genuine prices.- 2. Fostering competition.- 3. Privatization and capital markets.- 4. Trade and foreign-exchange reforms.- 5. Banking infrastructure and capital markets.- 6. Macroeconomic policy.- 7. Labor market.- 8. The social safety net.- 9. Institutions of the market.- 4. On the sequencing of reforms.- 5. Economic transition and east-west assistance.- Conclusions.

By the middle of 1987, it had become apparent that the drift towards far-reaching economic and political reforms in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, China and a number of Asian centrally planned economies would have far-reaching implications for the world economy. As new institutional arrangements evolve in those economies, the changes inevitably affect their entire external trade and payment relations. In the initial phase the reform process as well as its external policy aspects evoked considerable scepticism among participants in the global economy. It was against this backdrop that the Department of International Economic and Social Affairs convened an international symposium on the external impact of the economic reforms in the aforementioned countries. Its principal purpose was twofold to evaluate the external aspects of the ongoing reforms and their implications for the participation of these economies in the global economic framework. On the other hand, the symposium was to identify areas in which the more imtimate integration of these countries into the global economic framework could be facilitated and to separate those fields from others that would need more research, d

The unprecedented economic, political, and social changes that have followed the east European revolutions of late 1989 rank among the epochal events of the twentieth century. The end of the cold war has opened up far-reaching possibilities for international economic cooperation, which may be able to stimulate economic growth in the region and revive interactions with the global economy. This collection of essays comes to grips with the problems of repositioning the new Eastern economies in the global arena. The contributors address four main themes: freeing up foreign economic sectors through trade liberalization, currency convertibility, and greater access to markets for international capital; the disintegration of the trade payment, pricing, and settlements systems based on the transferable ruble; active participation in the key organizations entrusted with international financial, monetary, and trading regimes; and strategies for using international economic assistance to alleviate adjustment costs with ongoing transition policies

The unprecedented economic, political, and social changes that have followed the east European revolutions of late 1989 rank among the epochal events of the twentieth century. The end of the cold war has opened up far-reaching possibilities for international economic cooperation, which may be able to stimulate economic growth in the region and revive interactions with the global economy. This collection of essays comes to grips with the problems of repositioning the new Eastern economies in the global arena. The contributors address four main themes: freeing up foreign economic sectors through trade liberalization, currency convertibility, and greater access to markets for international capital; the disintegration of the trade payment, pricing, and settlements systems based on the transferable ruble; active participation in the key organizations entrusted with international financial, monetary, and trading regimes; and strategies for using international economic assistance to alleviate adjustment costs with ongoing transition policies

This book addresses the policy questions surrounding the challenge of transforming eastern European economies from their planned, administrative past to vibrant market-based entities.
Jozef van Brabant considers in turn, the wider set of challenges facing these economies - stabilization, privatization, liberalization, institution building, and developing and maintaining the sociopolitical consensus - before examining the evolving role of the state.
Using concrete examples from the eastern European countries throughout, including the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, this work systematically examines, in a society-wide context, the initial conditions of transformation, the policy tasks ahead and the manner in which policies have been pursued.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203072758

This volume focuses on the important issues raised by the recent economic reforms of the centrally planned economies of China, South-East Asia, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Participation in the international trade regime and how this may be affected by the economic reforms; implications of the reforms for economic relations with developing countries and development assistance performance; participation in international monetary and financial regimes and how this may be affected by economic reform; and the impact of economic reform on regional integration schemes are all analysed in depth.

First published in 1980, this book offers an account of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), the regional institution overseeing East European economic integration at the time. The author pursues three main themes in analyzing the sluggish pace of East European integration on trade, the role of East-West relations in the integration process, and the future of integration in the 1980s. Firstly he maintains that the integration process was delayed because of the confused postwar situation and disagreement among leaders of the region over a common economic programme for reconstruction and sustained growth. Secondly, he argues that the postwar development strategy and central planning of the economies inhibited regional cooperation. Finally the author contends that the organization and policy guidelines of the CMEA fell far short of what would seem to be needed to further integration.