Stabilization And Privatization In Poland

Stabilization and Privatization: An Economic Evaluation of the Shock Therapy Program is the first comprehensive account of Poland's economic transition since mid-1989. Monetary stabilization, trade liberalization (including convertibility) and privatization of state capital assets are discussed. Sources of economic recession which have accompanied the post-1989 transition are analyzed. The role of demand-side factors (i.e. monetary contraction) is weighed against that of supply-side factors (i.e. credit availability). The prevailing view is that the recession has been supply-type rather than demand-type. Economic performance has been impacted by the lack of a proper institutional framework (e.g. a segmented banking sector, diluted property rights). Arguments in favor of evolutionary reforms and market enhancing measures are presented. Stabilization and Privatization examines the main components of Poland's shock therapy program implemented in 1990. Post-shock recession, lasting at least through 1992, is examined to establish whether a sharp decline in output was caused by excessive demand contraction or lack of accommodating credit policies. The merits of an evolutionary approach and a more proactive state are debated.

The objectives in examining U.S. and other donor assistance in Poland were to: assess the status and progress of the country's economic restructuring in the key areas of macroeconomic stabilization, foreign trade and investment, privatization, and banking; describe impediments to these restructuring efforts; discuss the role donors have played in the transformation process; and identify lessons learned that could be useful to other transition countries. The lessons learned from Poland merit consideration by Russia, Ukraine and others.

The Solidarity-led government which came into power in Poland in Autumn 1989 faced two enormous tasks. First, to stabilize an economy prone to hyperflation. Second, to replace a crumbling command system in favour of a market mechanism, in a country whose market institutions had been destroyed under forty years of communist rule. This book recounts the events of this period and the course taken by the new government, and analyzes the significance of this for the transition process in Poland and elsewhere.

In Poland's jump to the Market Economy, Jeffrey Sachs provides an insider's analysis of the political events and economic strategy behind the country's swift transition to capitalism and democracy. The greatest challenges to economic reform, Sachs points out, have been primarily political in nature, rather than social or even economic.Sachs reviews Poland's striking progress since the start of the economic reforms three years ago, which he helped to design. He discusses the gains - more than half of employment and GDP is now in the private sector, exports to Western Europe have more than doubled, and economic growth and confidence are returning - as well as the serious problems that remain - high unemployment, a chronic fiscal deficit, the slow pace of privatization of large industrial enterprises, and the fragility of multiparty coalition governments.Sachs points out that leadership is crucial to economic reform in a newly democratic setting, as is the West's timely economic assistance. In Poland's case, the Zloty Stabilization Fund and the two-stage debt cancellation have been essential to keeping the reform program on track.Poland's example has had a powerful impact on reforms throughout the region, including the former Soviet Union, and has done much to dispel the fear that the citizens themselves, allegedly made lazy by decades of socialism, would reject the competitive rigors of a market economy. Overall, Sachs remains firmly convinced of the potential for successful economic reforms. in Poland and the rest of the region.Jeffrey Sachs is Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade at Harvard University, and has been an economic advisor to more than a dozen countries around the world, including Bolivia, Mongolia, Poland, and Russia.

The paper analyzes common issues emerging from the recent experience with Fund-supported programs in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. These comprise the initial price-overshooting and the output collapse, fiscal sustainability as well as the financial and structural problems associated with bad loan portfolios and sluggish implementation of privatization programs. Substantial success, in varying degrees, has been achieved in the initial macro-stabilization and opening-up effort. At the same time mounting difficulties with fiscal and monetary control may be emerging, as a result of social and political pressures and insufficiently clear policy signals on the micro-issues involving the sharp structural transformation of the productive and financial systems.

The creation of new economic and legal mechanisms to replace the fallen communist systems of Eastern Europe must surely count as one of the greatest organizational challenges of this century, and economists and politicians alike are constantly grappling with the enormity of the transformation to be achieved. In this volume, the authors give an in depth explanation of their now widely adopted approach to 'privatizing privatization' and chart the evolution of their thinking, particularly in reaction to real events and prevailing conditions. Expanding on the theme of transferring ownership to the private sector through a system of free vouchers and independent intermediaries, Professors Frydman and Rapaczynski address the dangers of bureaucratization and the delicate balance between the evolutionary elements and imposed regulations that must be achieved to make the transition a success. The perfect companion volume to The Privatization Process in Central Europe, this collection of essays provides a brilliant explanation of the most widely accepted theory of privatization in Eastern Europe today.

When communism fell in 1989, the question for most Eastern European countries was not whether to go to a market economy, but how to get there. Several years later, the difficult process of privatization and restructuring continues to concern the countries of the region. The Transition in Eastern Europe, Volumes 1 and 2 is an analysis of the experiences of various countries making the transition to market economies and examines the most important challenges still in store. Volume 1, Country Studies, gives an in-depth, country-by-country analysis of various reform experiences, including historical backgrounds and discussions of policies and results to date. The countries analyzed are Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, eastern Germany, Slovenia, and Russia. Written by leading economists, some of whom helped shape local and national reforms, this volume identifies common progress, common difficulties, and tentative solutions to the problems of economic transition. Volume 2, Restructuring, focuses on specific issues of transition, including how to design labor market institutions, privatization, new fiscal structures, and bankruptcy laws; how to reorganize foreign trade; and how to promote foreign direct investment. The articles, written by experts in the field, will be of direct help to those involved in the transition process. These volumes provide a standard reference on economic transition in the region for policymakers in Eastern Europe and in western countries, for international agencies concerned with the transition process, and for anyone interested in learning about the dramatic changes that have recently occurred in Eastern Europe.