This paper is the Introduction to a special issue of European Economy on `The Path of Reform in Central and Eastern Europe'. It discusses the sources of the current wave of `Europessimism': exogenous shocks, adjustment costs, sequencing errors, and other policy errors. This analysis may help in...

This Paper uses individual-level data to characterize economy-wide job creation and destruction during periods of massive structural adjustment. We contrast the gradualist Czech and the rapid Estonian approach to the destruction of the communist economy to provide evidence on selected...

Drawing on the recent literature on economic institutions and the origins of economic development, we offer a political economy explanation of why institution building has varied so much across transition economies. We identify dependence on natural resources and the historical experience of...

China’s economic reforms have resulted in spectacular growth and poverty reduction. However, China’s institutions look ill-suited to achieve such a result, and they indeed suffer from serious shortcomings. To solve "China puzzle" this paper analyses China’s institution - a regionally...

We develop a general equilibrium model that jointly considers the influence of capital accumulation constraints and of labour market frictions on the process of transition. We endogenize the economic and budgetary costs of different government policies and show that, early in transition,...

In most transition countries the aggregate level evidence suggests that most industries are just destroying jobs, due to the legacy of communism where over-manning levels of employment were the norm. This Paper sheds light on whether the transition process in Slovenian manufacturing has been one...

During transition, maintaining employment and providing a social safety net for the unemployed are important to social stability, which in turn is crucial for the productivity of the whole economy. Because independent institutions for social safety are lacking and firms with strong profit...

Given the concern about restructuring and the role of insiders during the transition, we analyse the determinants of (and trade-off between) investment and wages in Slovenian firms. We find that investment behaviour is more consistent with the imperfect capital market (internal funds) hypothesis...

A 2006 survey of 28,000 individuals in 28 post-communist countries reveals overwhelming support for revising privatization, but most respondents prefer to leave firms in private hands. We examine who wants to revise privatization and why. Respondents with poor human capital and few assets...

The adjustment of labour markets during transition has been quite different from that anticipated by the Optimal Speed of Transition (OST) literature. In particular, it has involved stagnant unemployment pools, large flows to inactivity and strikingly low workers' mobility especially when...