This book examines the instruments for decision coordination within and among the economies belonging to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). In light of the forcedeconomic adjustments of the early 1980s, Jozef van Brabant offers this study of the centrally planned economies and the inadequacy of their coordination mechanisms. He proposes that a resumption of faster growth depends largely upon increasing the pace of factor productivity growth--something that can only be achieved through structural change and a reform of the economic mechanism.

This is the first comprehensive study of the role of socialist countries within the international economic order. The author presents an overview of the emergence of the postwar economic order and examines the key features of three kinds of centrally planned economies. He then analyzes the role of financial frameworks and the international trade system in ensuring smooth economic relations among market-type economies and he details the problems of associating typical CPEs within them. Finally Jozef van Brabant explores the possibility of reconstituting a multilateral economic order that can...

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...