The transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union, among all emerging- and developing-economy
regions, have been hardest hit by the global economic crisis of
2008-09. This is partly due to the region’s deep integration into
the global economy across many dimensions—trade, financial, and
labor flows. Attempts by countries that came later to the transition to
catch up rapidly to Western European living standards at a time when
global liquidity was unusually abundant, together with some policy
weaknesses, made them vulnerable to reversals in market sentiment.
Written on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the
Berlin Wall, Turmoil at Twenty analyzes the run-up to the
current crisis and addresses a number of key questions related to
vulnerability to the recession, expected recovery, and necessary
reforms in the region:
- Did the transition from command to market economies, and the period
during which this took place, plant the seeds of vulnerability that
made transition countries more prone to crisis than other developing
countries?
- Did the choices made on the road from plan to market shape the
ability of crisis-hit countries to recover? What combination of
domestic policy reform and international collective action is needed to
bring about a recovery and minimize the humanitarian cost of the
crisis?
- What structural reforms are needed today to address the most
binding constraints on growth in a world where capital fl ows to
transition and developing countries are expected to be considerably
lower than before the crisis?
Turmoil at Twenty will be of interest to policy makers and
their advisers, researchers, and students of economics who seek lessons
from the current economic crisis, as well as scholars of the
transition.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Overview
1. Prelude to the crisis
Vulnerable ... but with variation • Transition meets global
finance • Would different macroeconomic policies have lessened
vulnerability? • Opening the toolkit
2. How much adjustment? How much financing?
Different shocks for different countries • Sharing the burden:
private and public, domestic and external • Crisis, adjustment,
and financing in low-income and lower middle-income CIS countries
• Of parents and offspring: understanding rollover risks in ECA
• Three concluding arguments—three caveats
3. Restructuring bank, corporate, and household debt
Financial systems need to be fixed • For the lenders: bank
restructuring • For the borrowers: corporate and household debt
restructuring • Lessons on restructuring from previous banking
and capital account crises • Lessons for strengthening bank
regulation and supervision
4. Scaling up social safety nets
Existing social assistance programs • Safety nets: ready to be
scaled up? • How important are safety nets in transferring
income? • Cost of expanding means-tested programs • An
opportunity for further reform
5. Prioritizing structural reform
Interpreting business environment surveys • Overview of results
• Growth bottlenecks • The persistence of legacy in shaping
the business environment
6. The day after 219
Bottlenecks in electricity—an agenda for reform • The
education and skills agenda—making the grade
- Shipping Weight: 0.98 lbs (0.44 kgs)
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