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Fifteen Years of Economic Transition

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Abstract

Three years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and one year after the break-up of the Soviet Union, Egon Matzner collaborated in the production of a book that was critical of the Western-inspired policy of market ‘shock therapy’ then being carried out in the countries of the former Soviet Bloc (Kregel et al., 1992).1 A key assumption behind this policy was that the market order would rapidly germinate and grow, once the old state bureaucracies were swept away. As the influential Western advisor Jeffrey Sachs (1993, p. xxi) contended: ‘markets spring up as soon as central planning bureaucrats vacate the field’.

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag/Wien

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Hodgson, G.M. (2008). Fifteen Years of Economic Transition. In: Schönbäck, W., Blaas, W., Bröthaler, J. (eds) Sozioökonomie als multidisziplinärer Forschungsansatz. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-69924-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-69924-9_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-211-69923-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-211-69924-9

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