Socialist Economies in Transition provides a coherent critique of economic reform in Eastern Europe which, it is argued, will create not prosperity but high levels of unemployment and severe economic dislocation. The authors show how the application of neoclassical economic theory will, in reality, prove unsuccessful and explain why, despite the revolutionary upheavals of 1989 and the immense effort to discard the restraints of planning, the intuitive mechanisms and practices of the free market have been so slow to appear.This volume offers an alternative route to economic reform, based on post Keynesian and Kaleckian traditions that combine individual diversity with control over the key sectors of the economy to maintain an acceptable level of stability and growth. This exciting and provocative book will be essential reading for all those concerned with the political economy of Eastern Europe.

Bringing together different perspectives on structural adjustment and the prospect for sustainable economic growth in Eastern Europe, Economics of Transition represents a shift in scholarly emphasis away from issues of stabilization and liberalization in favour of longer-term considerations. This major volume features a distinguished collection of papers focusing on the theoretical and policy implications of transition and change in Eastern Europe. Drawing on work from a wide range of traditions, it explores how effective demand induces growth, how diffusion takes place, how economic policy influences incentives, motivations and behaviours, how institutions influence organization and technological capability building, and how institutions both constrain and guide economic policy. Economics of Transition is the first of a major new series published by Edward Elgar for The Vienna Institute for Comparative Economic Studies. The intention of this new series is to encourage discussion on the economic theory and policy of transition and European economic integration.