This book contains 21 papers focusing on a wide range of issues concerning financial sector transition in the countries of Europe and Central Asia (ECA). It places the transition economies in the context of recent and prospective developments in global financial markets. This book also evaluates the experience of the last 10 years and reviews the progress from a command financial system to a market-based one, identifying some of the key characteristics of the financial transition.

It is now ten years since the former Soviet Union collapses and the countries of Europe and Central Asia abandoned central planning. Enough experience has accumulated to allow a more reflective study of the transition period. One of the most critical elements of the transition to a market-based economy has been the establishment of the institutions and markets that constitute a financial system. This book examines financial transition through the lens of flow of funds accounts. These accounts have been used in the OECD countries for many years as an aid in analyzing money flows around their financial systems. This is the first time, however, that an attempt has been made to interpret financial transition from this perspective and it has yielded what the authors consider to be new, useful insights into the processes.The book reviews the evolution of financial systems in eight transition countries: Estonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Romania. Each chapter draws upon a flow of funds analysis to illuminate the relationship between macroeconomic performance and the evolving pattern of financial flows through the emerging markets and institutions. The introductory chapter discusses the nature of the flow of funds approach and its applicability to transition economies, while another chapter compares and contrasts the macroeconomic and financial performances of the eight countries by focusing on the orientation of sectoral imbalances within each economy and the nature of financing flows associated with them.

Transition Economies provides students with an up-to-date and highly comprehensive analysis of the economic transformation in former communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union. With coverage extending from the end of central planning to the capitalist varieties of the present, this text provides a comparative analysis of economic transformation and political-economic diversity that has emerged as a direct result. It covers differences between countries in terms of economic performance and integration into the world economy. Transition Economies seeks to explain and deepen understanding of these differences, chart the emerging forms of capitalism there, and provide country responses to the world financial crisis of 2008-2009.

Much has been written about the economic and political problems of countries that are in the process of changing from centrally planned systems to market systems. Most studies have focused on the economic, legal, political and sociological problems these economies have had to face during the transition period. However, not much has been written about the dramatic changes that have to be made to the accounting and financial system of a transition economy. This book was written to help fill that gap. This book is the second in a series to examine accounting and financial system reform in transition economies. The first book used Russia as a case study. The present volume in the series examines some additional aspects of the reform in Russia and also looks at the accounting and financial system reform efforts that are being made in Ukraine, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Armenia and five Central Asian republics.

Worldwide experience highlights public finance policies that promote economic growth while meeting the need for fundamental public goods. Macroeconomic stability is essential, as large budget deficits retard growth, followed by moderate levels of public spending - around one-third of GDP or less - especially when governance and public administration are weak; that in turn requires efficiency, particularly in areas such as infrastructure, health, education, and social protection; finally, lower income and payroll tax rates can spur investment and employment. The Eastern European and Central Asia countries pioneered flat income taxes without generally suffering revenue losses as a result, but they have not addressed the problem of high payroll taxes and still face many hurdles in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending and revenue generation.

This report addresses the core components of enterprise activity, namely, the factors of production and the public infrastructure to support them. In the period just before the financial crisis, a number of elements, such as access to finance, skills and education of labor, and infrastructure emerged as important obstacles to enterprise growth. The aggregate level of enterprise activity and its productivity largely depend on the availability and quality of these components. The relative importance of these obstacles has evolved over time, reflecting structural reforms and progress in improving the business environment. Some of these constraints may have eased because of the crisis, but their presence during a period of economic growth suggests that there are important, unfinished structural reforms among countries in the ECA region. This report explores the impact of these constraints on firm performance in 29 Eastern European and Central Asian countries. The results show that enterprises in the region face varying levels of pressure depending on their features, location, resources directly accessible to them, and characteristics of country governance and regulatory frameworks. The report takes stock of enterprise sector performance along these three key dimensions near the end of two decades of the transition process. It is therefore critical to understand where firms in these countries stand now in terms of their relative access to finance, labor markets and quality of labor, and infrastructure capacity.

The transition economies of the Europe and Central Asia Region faced unprecedented political, economic, and social change after the break-up of the Soviet Union. With assistance from the World Bank and other donors, many countries quickly accomplished a number of reforms, but progress in others has been slower. Much has been achieved - the private share of GDP in the transition countries is nearly 70 percent, and 8 countries have joined the EU - but much remains to be completed. 'Economies in Transition' assesses the effectiveness of Bank assistance to the transition, focusing particularly on five topics: 1) private sector development; 2) governance, public sector management, and institution-building; 3) the financial sector; 4) social protection; and 5) energy. Overall Bank assistance has been successful, but there were mistakes before the true nature of transition was fully understood. The Bank internalized the emerging lessons and shifted its emphasis accordingly. This study highlights the importance of lending at prudent levels until a solid knowledge base is established, with convincing evidence of government and societal ownership of the assistance program. It contends that analysis of governance and poverty monitoring should be early features of the assistance program, active programs of stakeholder inclusion should be widely replicated, and country assistance strategies used to bolster reform capacity.

Innovation and technology absorption are now firmly recognized as one of the main sources of economic growth for emerging and advanced economies alike. International R&D collaboration and FDI are critical and require government support programs, specially financial ones.

Since the early 1990s the transition economy countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia have had to adapt their pension systems in minor and often very major ways. Some of the changes relate to shrinking contribution bases and the inability of government's to finance prior commitments, while still having to protect the pensioned populations from poverty. Other changes, however, reflect the need to make pension systems more sustainable in light of forthcoming demographic changes. The reforms entail a move away from a single-pillar pay-as-you-go defined benefit systems toward multi-pillar systems that include a funded defined contribution component, and change that convert remaining pay-as-you-go components into ones that are more self sustaining and transparent. The paper describes ongoing developments, assesses the effects of current and forthcoming challenges in light of potential labor market changes, and examines choices for a new pensions system with respect to the organization, administration, guarantees, transition arrangements, participation requirements, role of the government, annuitization, and other factors. The paper concludes that though a 'one-size-fits-all' approach is clearly not appropriate, some practices emerging from the experiences in this region and elsewhere may offer useful guidance to others as they undertake deeper pension reforms.

With the larger role that the agricultural sector plays in the Eastern Europe and Central Asian (ECA) region, emphasis must be placed on the sector's sustained growth and prosperity. The Bank strategy for rural development in the ECA region during the early phase of transition emphasized the reform of agricultural policies and assistance in privatizing, restructuring, and rebuilding agriculture and agro-industrial complexes. In retrospect, it can be seen that the ECA countries concerned made the right choice when they set their objective to transform their socialized agriculture into a private-ownership and market-based system. Given the developments of the past decade, it is clear, however, that the initial expectations for the outcomes of such reforms were overly optimistic. The transition process in agriculture is far more complex than originally envisaged by both the countries themselves and the international community, including the Bank. Increased social problems and alarming growth of poverty have added a new, unexpected, dimension to the transition process. As the analysis indicates, the region's rural economy is still struggling to adjust to new economic realities, and this will require further refinement and adjustment of the Bank's approach as well. This volume, based on an overview of recent regional developments, summarizes the revised World Bank assistance strategy for rural development in the ECA region.