Since the seminal work of Adam Smith, markets have been considered an efficient tool for co-ordinating the behaviour of economic agents. The basic characteristic of a market economy is that the complex system of interaction among individuals is not centrally coordinated. Under the assumption of...

Since the late 1980s, agriculture in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) has been under considerable adjustment pressure due to changing political, economic and institutional environments. These changes have been linked to the transition process, as well as the ongoing integration...

Rural areas in Central and Eastern Europe are very often associated with a backwardness in terms of income and employment opportunities, a high dependency on agriculture, the out-migration of young, skilled people, a low population density and an insufficient infrastructure. In this paper 3...

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Seit Beginn der Transformation haben in den Ländern Mittel- und Osteuropas (MOEL) die interregionalen Disparitäten zugenommen. Insbesondere die Stadt-Land-Gegensätze haben sich verstärkt. Dieser Beitrag zeigt die Entwicklung der Disparitäten auf und diskutiert auf...

This paper presents the results of a case study of local economic development in Dolina Strugu, Podkarpackie voivodship, Poland. Its aim is to analyse local development problems and chances, to investigate the potential of endogenous initiatives to support economic development, and to examine...

The paper aims at a conceptual contribution to the normative economic analysis of rural de-velopment (RD) policies. RD is regarded as a problem of interaction between individuals; (lacking) structural change or the (missing) integration of externalities are therefore recon-structed as...

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the gap in economic development between rural and urban regions in Poland has continuously grown. Increasing income disparities and the lack of job opportunities have already led to an outflow of young people out of and an increasing obsolescence in rural areas....

Polish rural areas, compared to other EU-25 member states, still show a high agricultural employment due to a lack of job opportunities in other rural economic sectors. In particular, in South-eastern Poland the shut down of heavy industry companies in the early 1990s left many rural inhabitants...

Croatia is very close to meeting the requirements necessary for becoming a member of the European Union (EU). On February 6, 2008, the European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said that accession negotiations with Croatia are moving ahead well. As in all new member states (NMS), the...

Kazakhstanâs agricultural sector plays an important role in the country's economy. Not only does it function as an economic output producer, it also serves as a social buffer in times of transition to a market economy. The restructuring process had a strong impact on the economic performance of...