This thought-provoking book investigates the political and economic transformation that has taken place over the past three decades in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Through an examination of both the successes and shortcomings of post communist reform and the challenges ahead for the region, it explores the topical issues of economic transition and integration, and highlights lessons to be learned.

Catch Up analyzes the evolution of developing countries in the world economy from a long-term historical perspective, from the onset of the second millennium but with a focus on the second half of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century. It is perhaps among the first to address this theme on such a wide canvas that spans both time and space. In doing so, it highlights the dominance of what are now developing countries and it traces their decline and fall from 1820 to 1950. The six decades since 1950 have witnessed an increase in the share of developing countries not only in world population and world income, but also in international trade, international investment, industrial production, and manufactured exports which gathered momentum after 1980. This book explores the factors underlying this fall and rise, to discuss the on-going catch up in the world economy driven by industrialization and economic growth. Their impressive performance, disaggregated analysis shows, is characterized by uneven development. There is an exclusion of countries and people from the process. The catch up is concentrated in a few countries. Growth has often not been transformed into meaningful development that improves the wellbeing of people. Yet, the beginnings of a shift in the balance of power in the world economy are discernible. But developing countries can sustain this rise only if they can transform themselves into inclusive societies where economic growth, human development, and social progress move in tandem. Their past could then be a pointer to their future.

This interdisciplinary collection of 82 articles is designed to bring today's most pressing issues into the classroom and help prepare college students to assume their roles as members of an increasingly global community.

Chapter 1 Introduction -- chapter 2 Banks and their role in a modern market-oriented economy -- chapter 3 Banking under socialism -- chapter 4 Transition, liberalization, banking crises and reform policies (up to around 2000) -- chapter 5 Post-transition crisis developments, strengths and weaknesses of contemporary banking sectors (since around 2000) -- chapter 6 Perspectives of banking in Central and Eastern Europe.

After the miraculous economic growth known as the Beijing Consensus, China is now facing a slowdown. The attention has moved to the issue of the middle income trap. This book deals with this interesting issue in the context of China. It also discusses China's limitations and future prospects, especially after the rise of a new "cold war" between China and the US, namely the question of whether China would fall into another trap called the "Thucydides trap", or conflict with the existing hegemon as a rising power. In sum, this book plays around three key terms, namely, the Beijing Consensus, the Middle Income Trap, and the Thucydides trap, and applies a Schumpeterian approach to these concepts. It also conducts a comparative analysis that examines China from an "economic catch-up" perspective. An economic catch-up starts from learning and imitating a forerunner, but finishing the race successfully requires taking a different path along the road. This act is also known as leapfrogging, which implies a latecomer doing something different from, and often ahead of, a forerunner. Technological leapfrogging may lead to technological catch-up, which means reducing the technological gap, and then finally to economic catch-up in living standards (per capita income) and economic size (GDP: economic power). This linkage from technological leapfrogging and catch-up to economic catch-up corresponds exactly with a similar linkage from the Beijing Consensus to escaping (or not) the middle income and the Thucydides traps. One conclusion from this book is that China's successful rise as a global industrial power has been due to its strategy of technological leapfrogging, which has enabled China to move beyond the middle income trap and possibly the Thucydides trap, although at a slower speed.

In this collection of essays David A Dyker explores some of the most difficult and fascinating aspects of the process of transition from autocratic “real socialism” to a capitalism that is sometimes democratic, sometimes authoritarian. The stress is on the economic dimension of transformation, but the author sets the economic drama firmly within a political economy framework and a historical perspective. Trends in key economic variables are analysed against the background of the struggle between different social and political groups for power and command over resources. While the book pays due attention to topical issues like EU enlargement, the underlying perspective is a long-term one. Transition is viewed not as a set of once-and-for-all institutional changes or a process of short-term stabilisation, but as a historic opportunity to solve the inherited problem of poverty and underdevelopment in Central-East Europe and the former Soviet Union. The book ends with a critical assessment of how economics, as a discipline, has coped with the challenge of that historic opportunity.