Given the political, financial, social, and economic conditions inherited from Communist rule, Romania's new government concluded that a shock therapy approach to reform would create unmanageable chaos and enduring instability. Though committed to economic liberalization, decisionmakers espoused a gradualist approach to economic reform. The government pursued its objectives by implementing policies it considered functionally operational. Although Romania experienced the macro dislocations and downturns that are common in transitional economies in the region, the country sustained shallower recessions, lower inflationary spirals, and shorter production losses than many reforming economies. This study analyzes how, against calculated probabilities and within a relatively short time period, Romania has stabilized and assembled all the basic ingredients for a successful transformation from a centralized system to a market-driven economy.

The lessons derivable from Romania's relatively successful experiment with systemic transformation could be beneficial to reform architects in all newly liberalized economies in Eastern Europe. The conclusions of this study reinforce the view that it is imperative to examine and foster the existing preconditions, including political, institutional, and financial components, before subjecting an economy to extensive and intensive shocks that could be judiciously mitigated or circumvented. Unlike other newly liberalized economies in Eastern Europe, where the once disgraced Communists have returned to power, sympathy for a centralized system has been steadily and swiftly declining in Romania. The primary factor in Romania's success, the author claims, is its circumspect approach to reform.

.Economic reform measures introduced in Poland have been the most radical and ambitious in the newly free countries of Eastern Europe. In a short time that country has moved from a centrally planned economy to a free-market system. The ramifications and implications of these economic reforms are influencing economic thought and planning in other recently liberalized, formerly communist societies.

Raphael Shen asserts that measures taken to transform the Polish economy should be implemented over time rather than overnight, and should be moderate rather than radical. Throwing the centrally planned system out and replacing it with the free-market system instantly means that, in the short term at least, Poland will have no smoothly functioning system in place. The necessary economic infrastructure and basic institutions have had no time to develop. The contrived market system cannot function in a meaningful way. The current experience in Poland has already led to extensive disillusionment among Polish consumers and doubts among academicians. The Polish experience will be a valuable lesson in economics for students and decision makers. Shen's book valuable to students, teachers, and researchers in the areas of comparative economic systems, economic development, and economic history.

This study examines the relative successes and failures of reform programs in Poland and Czechoslovakia, as well as the causes of these successes and failures. It provides a synthesized and comparative study of efforts to achieve systemic economic transformation. The work begins with the identification of background forces in these two countries--cultural, social, political, and economic--analyzing their impact on micro-responsiveness to reform policies. Then, within the framework of these forces, the author traces the causes of the two economies' reform failures during and since the Communist era. The central purpose of the work is to provide objective lessons for economies attempting systemic transformations or implementing development policies. This work will be of interest to scholars and policymakers in development economics and comparative economic systems and policies.

Political and economic independence has been a novel experience for the 51 million people of Ukraine since the collapse of the former Soviet Union. This most tightly controlled and regulated republic of the former USSR has had difficulty in making the transition to another form of government. The hurdles and uncommon difficulties which must be neutralized or mitigated before market forces can materialize and become viable are described and analyzed in each of the core chapters. The work concludes with practical lessons and recommendations for Ukraine, and, by extrapolation, for the other economies of Eastern Europe.

Both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping drastically altered the course of contemporary China's economic development using opposing strategies. Mao froze China's economic system in a perennial state of consumer goods shortages and pervasive macro disequilibria. Deng, however, began thawing a rigidly structured system by introducing experimental reform measures. Mao's revolutionary rhetoric brought China's economy to the brink of bankruptcy. Deng's ideological pragmatism netted China glowing successes. Mao closed China to the outside world. Deng engineered China's reintegration into the world economy.

Dismantling a dysfunctional system and replacing it with a dynamic new one involving 1.2 billion people is risk-laden. Reform in China began in 1978. It was tentative and experimental, confining reform to organizational and administrative decentralization on farms. Successes on farms ushered in reform elsewhere in the economy. Over time, market-based coordinating mechanisms progressively began replacing the systeM's control devices. Results from decentralization internally reinforced those from liberalization externally. This consequently transformed China's stale, distorted system into a more competitive, bustling new one ready for developmental takeoff. Its meteoric rise among the world's leading markets in recent years has thrust China's economy to the forefront of growth and development. Controlled, phased reform is yielding dividends, not only for its own consumers but for international economic cooperation and growth as well.

The promise of a smooth systemic transformation in the Baltic states has been overshadowed by unforeseen obstacles. Speedy disengagement from the past, particularly from long established practices and inherited economic relationships, has proven more trying than originally anticipated. Compelling interview materials from the region's 115 leading government officials, including prime ministers, and academicians, highlight the major points of the text. Scholars in the United States and Europe, government officials, research and business institutes, and business trade associations will find this a thought provoking analysis of the progress and prospects of former Soviet republics and the lessons this provides for other republics of the former USSR.