How successful has the transition to market economies proved in East-Central Europe? The decision by the East European countries to move to market economies was accompanied by much hypothesising and expounding of economic theories. However, now that the initial euphoria has passed it is time for a rational assessment of this transition and the success of those theories in practice.
Since the more economically advanced countries are situated in East Central Europe, Jan Winiecki and Andrzej Kondratowicz have focused their study on Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and (former) Yugoslavia. The...

Poland's transition from socialism to capitalism has largely been praised as a success story. In reality, however, according to this study, Poland's case is an 'incomplete' transition.
Looking at the processes involved in economic transition, covering key issues including financial markets, labour markets, competition and intervention, social security, property rights and attitudes towards the changing political economy, this book provides a wide-ranging and invaluable study of economic development. It will be of great use to economists, those involved in Russian and East European...

Transition Economies and Foreign Trade makes the bold claim to have solved puzzles that have hindered the subject for years. By taking the distortions of the Communist era into consideration, Winiecki has explained the phenomenon of the decline in output and trade, as well as explaining the dual commodity nature of exports in the early transition phase.
The book's intriguing analyses include:
*the legacy of the Communist past upon foreign trade transition
*the reorientation of exports from the East to the West
*trade and exchange rate regimes and their impact upon...

The transformation of state-owned enterprises into privately owned ones is commonly referred to as 'privatization'. As important as this process, though sometimes not given the attention it deserves and requires, is the establishment and expansion of new private firms.
This book analyzes new entrepreneurial firms that emerge and occasionally flourish after a period of state communism has come to an end. The authors rightly focus on the aftermath of the end of communism by looking firstly at the inevitable output decline, followed by an overview of new entrepreneurial firms. Specific East...

This substantial and innovative contribution to the critical literature on the economies of the former Soviet bloc is unusual in that its author is equally familiar with both Western and Eastern sources.

First published in 1987, this is an analysis of the contemporary breakdown of political and economic systems within the Eastern European communist countries. Rather than passively following the developments of this crisis, the author seeks instead to identify the reasons for failure and to examine alternative policies that offer solutions to these problems. Jan Winiecki's work offers a comparative study of the Soviet-type economies of the East with the market economies of the West; providing a cause and effect analysis of each model, with possible scenarios for their future prospects.

First published in 1997, this collection of articles and essays analyses the political economy of reform and change in Eastern Europe during the years of Gorbachev's perestroika and the years immediately following the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Written by Polish economist Jan Winiecki, between 1984 and 1996, this work explores the issue of the feasibility of reform and change during the period of decline and collapse of communist economic order and, later, the emergence of the capitalist economic order in the post-communist Eastern Europe. Split into three...

The transformation of state-owned enterprises into privately owned ones is commonly referred to as 'privatization'. Just as important as this process, though sometimes not given the attention it deserves and requires, is the establishment and expansion of new private firms. This text analyses new entrepreneurial firms that emerge and occasionally flourish after a period of state communism has come to an end. The authors rightly focus on the aftermath of the end of communism by looking first at the inevitable output decline, followed by an overview of new entrepreneurial firms.

This work uses a property rights perspective to analyse why there is such widespread resistance to change in the Soviet Economic System. Jan Winiecki argues that a cost-effective way of removing the resistance of the parasitic ruling stratum would be a system of compensatory payments.

These memoirs portray an individual coping with the adversities and surrealistic qualities of life and work under communism. The author recollects his adolescence, next, how he tried to avoid head-on conflicts, dissented, and how he finally became a known critic of the system. As such, he belonged to a group of advisers to the underground -Solidarity- leadership. His memoirs help to understand the collapse of the communist system and the stormy period of systemic change from a personal perspective. The author participated in these changes as an already well known Sovietologist, as well as...