Jozef M. Van Brabant - Böcker

By the middle of 1987, it had become apparent that the drift towards far-reaching economic and political reforms in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, China and a number of Asian centrally planned economies would have far-reaching implications for the world economy. As new institutional arrangements evolve in those economies, the changes inevitably affect their entire external trade and payment relations. In the initial phase the reform process as well as its external policy aspects evoked considerable scepticism among participants in the global economy. It was against this backdrop that the Department of International Economic and Social Affairs convened an international symposium on the external impact of the economic reforms in the aforementioned countries. Its principal purpose was twofold to evaluate the external aspects of the ongoing reforms and their implications for the participation of these economies in the global economic framework. On the other hand, the symposium was to identify areas in which the more imtimate integration of these countries into the global economic framework could be facilitated and to separate those fields from others that would need more research, d

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 through trade liberalization, currency convertibility, and greater access to markets for international capital; the disintegration of the trade payment, pricing, and settlements systems based on the transferable ruble; active participation in the key organizations entrusted with international financial, monetary, and trading regimes; and strategies for using international economic assistance to alleviate adjustment costs with ongoing transition policies

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 through trade liberalization, currency convertibility, and greater access to markets for international capital; the disintegration of the trade payment, pricing, and settlements systems based on the transferable ruble; active participation in the key organizations entrusted with international financial, monetary, and trading regimes; and strategies for using international economic assistance to alleviate adjustment costs with ongoing transition policies

This book addresses the policy questions surrounding the challenge of transforming eastern European economies from their planned, administrative past to vibrant market-based entities.Jozef van Brabant considers in turn, the wider set of challenges facing these economies - stabilization, privatization, liberalization, institution building, and developing and maintaining the sociopolitical consensus - before examining the evolving role of the state.Using concrete examples from the eastern European countries throughout, including the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, this work systematically examines, in a society-wide context, the initial conditions of transformation, the policy tasks ahead and the manner in which policies have been pursued.

This 1988 book examines the indirect instruments and the related institutions that help to coordinate key economic decisions within and among the economies belonging to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). The chief purpose is two-fold: to assess thier adequacy in light of the forced economic adjustments of the early 1980s and to formulate feasible changes for both in order to avert a recurrence of such developmental obstacles. Jozef van Brabant argues that these instruments and institutions are inadequate. He proposes that a resumption of rapid growth depends largely upon bolstering factor productivity growth, which can only be achieved through positive structural changes and a root-and-branch reform of the individual and groupwide economic mechanisms.

This 1991 book was 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 analyses 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 provide greater security, predictability, stability, and reliability in international economic relations. The Planned Economies and International Economic Organizations was written at a time when the Soviet Union and other centrally planned economies were seeking closer links with the mainstream world economy. It will therefore be of interest to governments and institutional economists as well as to students and specialists of Soviet and East European studies, international relations and comparative economics.

With the revolutions in Eastern Europe since mid-1989, two main transformations are envisaged: pluralistic political democracy and a market economy based largely on private property and self-interest. One element that straddles those two objectives is what to do with state-owned property during the transition from a planned to a market environment. This work looks at the economic goals that may be pursued in various ways: by taking the state out of the allocation of the service streams of existing capital assets in general and state-owned enterprise in particular. It advocates the urgency of taking politics out of resource allocation. Since this cannot be done through divestment, particularly for large assets, it is imperative that alternatives be put in place at the earliest possible opportunity in the economic transformation. For petty assets (such housing, small shops, handicrafts and restaurants) quick divestment is desirable. For other assets, the principal agent problem will need to be taken care of by investing management with the task of acting in the interest of real owders.