Economic Reforms in Centrally Planned Economies - Hardcover

This volume focuses on the important issues raised by the recent economic reforms of the centrally planned economies of China, South-East Asia, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Participation in the international trade regime and how this may be affected by the economic reforms; implications of the reforms for economic relations with developing countries and development assistance performance; participation in international monetary and financial regimes and how this may be affected by economic reform; and the impact of economic reform on regional integration schemes are all analysed in depth.

By the middle of 1987, it had become apparent that the drift towards far-reaching economic and political reforms in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, China and a number of Asian centrally planned economies would have far-reaching implications for the world economy. As new institutional arrangements evolve in those economies, the changes inevitably affect their entire external trade and payment relations. In the initial phase the reform process as well as its external policy aspects evoked considerable scepticism among participants in the global economy. It was against this backdrop that the Department of International Economic and Social Affairs convened an international symposium on the external impact of the economic reforms in the aforementioned countries. Its principal purpose was twofold to evaluate the external aspects of the ongoing reforms and their implications for the participation of these economies in the global economic framework. On the other hand, the symposium was to identify areas in which the more imtimate integration of these countries into the global economic framework could be facilitated and to separate those fields from others that would need more research, dialogue and negotiation before further integration into the global economy could realistically be envisioned. This book provides a collection of articles from this symposium providing an account of the conference as well as the subjects and research topics in discussion.