> -----Original Message-----
> From: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. [SMTP:rosserjb at jmu.edu]
> Sent: Monday, May 03, 1999 4:45 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: Poland
>
> Seth,
> Hungary never had "shock therapy." It has
> long been viewed as the classic case of "gradualism."
> It is also a case of not having stalled out or getting
> side tracked by corruption or wars or all sorts of other
> nonsense, despite the temptation of revanchist nationalism
> due to all the ethnic Hungarians located outside its borders.
> Gradual, but reasonably steady and well thought out.
> Poland had macroeconomic "shock therapy" and it
> was successful at reducing the inflation rate. It has not been
> successful at reducing unemployment very much. As I noted,
> for all its success and the cheers of the IMF, etc. (which, however
> still fusses at Poland for not having privatized more), Poland
> has yet had a government that could get itself reelected. There
> is still a lot of unhappiness on the ground in all of these countries.
> For both Poland and Hungary, things were somewhat easier,
> not only because of their more western pasts and orientation, but
> also because they had been the most market oriented of the old
> Soviet bloc countries and thus already had some of the institutional
> framework and infrastructure in place. Thus, the therapy was not
> so "shocking" and in Hungary's case was not even what happened.
> Barkley Rosser
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Seth Ackerman <SAckerman at FAIR.org>
> To: 'lbo-talk at lists.panix.com' <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> Date: Monday, May 03, 1999 4:36 PM
> Subject: RE: Poland
>
>
> >So does the relative success of Poland and Hungary prove that shock
> >therapy in some form can work? That the failure of Russia stemmed
> form
> >purely Russian circumstances, not from the policies themselves?
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. [SMTP:rosserjb at jmu.edu]
> >> Sent: Monday, May 03, 1999 3:50 PM
> >> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> >> Subject: Re: Poland
> >>
> >> Doug,
> >> Poland's debt reduction certainly helped, but was
> >> not the end all and be all. Hungary did not have one
> >> and has been doing nearly as well as Poland. Of course
> >> they had very different strategies vis a vis privatization
> >> which were related to this issue. Hungary has emphasized
> >> selling off its assets to foreign multinationals as its way of
> >> privatizing. This is also more gradual than the instant
> >> privatization voucher schemes pushed by our Bates Medal
> >> Winner, Shleifer, that have been such miserable failures in
> >> the CR and Russia. But one at least gets a fresh injection
> >> of finance, new tech, access to foreign markets, and
> >> managerial restructuring out of it.
> >> OTOH, Poland has been much more leary of opening
> >> to foreign direct investment, with much of that related to a
> >> residual fear of German domination. (Much of the fdi in
> >> Hungary has come from the much less scary Austria,
> >> associated nostalgically with the Habsburgs).
> >> The issue is that the debt reduction in Poland made
> >> potential foreign investors more leary of going into Poland.
> >> But that was just fine with the Poles. The Hungarians wanted
> >> fdi and thus have put up with continuing to make high
> >> interest payments on their left over debts from their days
> >> of Kadaresque "goulash communism" and soft budget
> >> constraint market socialism.
> >> BTW, the CR and Slovakia did not have this legacy of
> >> foreign debts or of hyperinflation as the starting point of their
> >> transitions was that of a very rigid command socialism.
> >> Barkley Rosser
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> >> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> >> Date: Monday, May 03, 1999 2:17 PM
> >> Subject: Poland
> >>
> >>
> >> >J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote:
> >> >
> >> >>Curiously, Poland, which you pose as a highly reformed
> >> >>economy (and it is) has been much slower to privatize.
> >> >
> >> >Poland also got a 50% debt cancellation, no? How important was
> that?
> >> >
> >> >Speaking of Poland, Wojtek, I'd like to hear your opinion of the
> >> early
> >> >1980s Solidarnosc.
> >> >
> >> >Doug
> >> >
> >