International Political Economy and Socialism

International Political Economy and Socialism, first published in 1991, is a revised and updated version of Professor Marie Lavigne's best seller Economie Internationale des Pays Socialistes. It is a useful revision in which she presents a comprehensive view of the strategies and achievements in the international trade of the Soviet Union, the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Marie Lavigne divides the book into three parts. In the first, she examines trading relations within the CMEA and with their partners in the South and the West. Part two focuses on the main categories of products which dominate these trading relationships - technology, energy and food. In the final section, Professor Lavigne analyses the management of international financial relations by countries which lack domestic monetary markets. She concludes by raising questions concerning the place these socialist economies occupy in the world economy and the place they may occupy in the future.