TRANSITION TO MARKET ECONOMY IN THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES – COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

While in the Western Europe market economy had developed several centuries, in the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) the transition from centrally planned to market economy has been undertaken in a considerably shorter time. Although the long-term objectives of CEECs were similar, discrepancies arose in each country as regards the priorities, order and pace of the reforms to be undertaken. The paper starts with a brief view on the transition process in the CEECs and on the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) theory. The main part of the paper deals with comparative analysis of economic performance of CEECs’ and three benchmark Western European countries with focus on three dimensions of the economy, namely macroeconomic stability, innovation/growth/competitiveness and welfare/equality. We identify the main differences and similarities across the CEECs from the view of the three dimensions. Then we try to find which out of the two VoC ideal types the respective CEECs are closer to. The key outcomes of the analysis are summarized in conclusion

Large-scale transformation of socio-economic institutions - comparative case studies on CEECs: interim report

The general idea is to follow the Varieties-of-Capitalism literature on generating indicators on the economic systems actually implemented. However, this literature mostly concentrates on the enterprise (or micro) level in traditional OECD countries, categorizing countries between the extremes: liberal market economies and controlled market economies. It largely neglects the role of the government spending, the transition of former socialist countries and developing countries, and the political process behind the choice of an economic system. We broaden the perspective by combining the Varieties-of-Capitalism with the Worlds-of-Welfare-States literature in order to provide a comprehensive view on government activities in transition. With the perspective of our contribution to WWWforEurope, we concentrate especially on social welfare, innovation systems, macro stability, and, of course, how these aspects work together (or not) and are explained by the political background. We will a cluster analysis for OECD and European transition countries and comparative country studies on Slovakia and Hungary. These countries are of special relevance because they represent extreme cases (Slovakia: significant switch in transition path towards star performer, Hungary: muddling towards problem case). One part of the comparative work concentrates on the comparison of Slovakia with other new EU members that also face to challenge of state building after dissolution of one or the other sort (Czech Rep. and the Baltics). The other part of the comparative work concentrates on Hungary in comparison with the other EU-CEECs. A broad based comparison will most likely be possible on available data only. The possibility for deeper qualitative comparisons will have to be determined during the project. The comparative components will focus on the macroeconomic background (Slovakia) and the welfare state (Hungary) respectively. Cluster analysis (initially forseen for MS25) and comparative country studies allows us to draw conclusions for the EU by providing a first comparison of the position of CEECs with respect to the “old” EU members, most interestingly the southern crisis countries that are often categorized into a form called mixed market economies with sometimes contradicting institutional set ups. Do CEECs converge towards prototype models or do they (still) constitute own models

RIO Country Report 2016: Slovakia

The 2016 series of the RIO Country Report analyses and assesses the development and performance of the national research and innovation system of the EU-28 Member States and related policies with the aim of monitoring and evaluating the EU policy implementation as well as facilitating policy learning in the Member States.JRC.B.7-Knowledge for Finance, Innovation and Growt

RIO Country Report 2017: Slovak Republic

The R&I Observatory country report 2017 provides a brief analysis of the R&I system covering the economic context, main actors, funding trends & human resources, policies to address R&I challenges, and R&I in national and regional smart specialisation strategies. Data is from Eurostat, unless otherwise referenced and is correct as at January 2018. Data used from other international sources is also correct to that date. The report provides a state-of-play and analysis of the national level R&I system and its challenges, to support the European Semester.JRC.B.7-Knowledge for Finance, Innovation and Growt