The first phase of transition to a market economy in Central and Eastern Europe was characterized by a sharp output decline. The fall in real GDP exceeded 20% while real industrial production decreased even by 40%. Output Decline in Eastern Europe aims at providing comprehensive, multi-factor explanations for this unique, painful experience. Various hypotheses are analyzed: credit and fiscal policies may have been too tight; the collapse of the CMEA and the USSR came as a shock; domestic producers were neither experienced, nor flexible enough to adjust the output to new patterns of...

Main Economic Policy Areas of the EC: After 1992 is a completely rewritten version of past editions. It examines successes and problems associated with the EC's main economic policy areas and makes proposals for the future. For the first time, a chapter on the very important policy area of transport is included.
This volume is an indispensable course book and handbook for all individuals interested in the European Community's main policy areas at the beginning of the coming into effect of the Single European Market.

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This compact volume is meant as a modest contribution to the ongoing debate on how to transform in particular the radically reforming Eastern European economies into more productive sociopolitical organizations. Although my main focus here is on the economics of reform and east-west assistance, I have tried to embed the multiple technical aspects of restructuring such a resource alloca tion into the context of remaking Eastern Europe. That the volume coincides with the seminal transformations of the communist countries of Eastern Europe is, of course, not fortuitous. But I shall have much...

What determines the number of political parties in a democracy? Electoral rules certainly influence the incentives to create and maintain parties. However, a society's political culture can maintain parties despite electoral rules that give them poor prospects of success. Thus, comparing the number of parties and differences in electoral rules across countries cannot clearly test the effect of the electoral rules. A better test would examine a society with a fairly continuous political culture, but a change in electoral rules. Postwar France is such a society. While the basic social order has...

This monograph presents a detailed examination of a variety of issues pertain ing to pricing in the context of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), a designation that I much prefer over Comecon. It situates itself within the contours of the pricing problematique that I have recently analyzed as one component of the broader aspects of monetary cooperation, essentially among the Eastern European countries (see Chapters 4 and 5 of Brabant, 1987). The suggestion that I elaborate in detail on the circumstances under which prices for regional trade within the framework of the CMEA are...

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