On the whole, 2012 was a disappointing year for the economies of Central, East and Southeast Europe (CESEE), confirming fears of a double-dip recession in the euro area adversely impacting large parts of the CESEE region. This rather poor performance stands in sharp contrast to the better...

Why did the socialist system that dominated Eastern European countries for much of the 20th century collapse around 1990? Drawing on the newly released wiiw COMECON Dataset and reports that the wiiw was publishing at that time, we explore whether the collapse was due to unfixable systemic flaws...