Michael Kaser – författare

The International Economic Association (IEA) was founded in 1950 as a non-profit organization with purely scientific aims. It is in fact a federation of national economic associations and presently includes 58 professional organizations from around the world. Its basic purpose is the development of economics as an intellectual discipline and the organization has tried to fulfil this purpose by promoting mutual understanding within all parts of the world. During its existence it has organized over 70 round-table conferences for specialists on topics ranging from fundamental theories to methods and tools of analysis and major problems of the present-day world. Triennial World Congresses are also held, and have regularly attracted the participation of a great many economists from all over the world. The publication in 1991 of a conference held in 1958 does, however, require some form of explanation. The conference was funded and due to be published by UNESCO but UNESCO lacked the resources to do so.The conference itself was a mixture of communist and non-communist countries which ranged from the USSR, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria of the the communist countries to USA, France, Brazil, Egypt and Turkey fom non-communist countries. It quickly showed that with the help of translators a successful meeting of minds between economists of the two schools can be achieved. The USSR, represented by the Association of Soviet Economic Scientific Institutions, quickly joined the International Economic Association. The interest of this book is that the hopes and expectations of 1958 can now be assessed in light of the development of the last 30 years.

The state and its institutions are crucial for economic development: for better and for worse. This insight informs this important, up-to-date and authoritative survey of new trends in growth economics and the widely divergent economic performance of developing countries - for example, between Latin America and South-east Asia - which seemed to be similarly placed just a generation ago. The decisive role of the political dimension in economic growth seems clear but there are many challenges to be met in getting an analytical handle on the precise determinants and in testing empirically for this. This is the challenge taken up by the international team of contributors.

Health Care in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (1976) examines the systems of health care in the Communist countries of the Eastern Bloc. Many enjoyed comprehensive free health care, established with the Communist takeovers and transition to planned economies, as they moved from an agrarian to an industrialised system. This book traces their beginnings and development, and offers comparisons between each of them as well as with the West.