Understanding Economic Transitions

<i>Understanding Economic Transitions</i> explains the genesis, operation, and transformation of the centrally-planned socialist economy, which figured prominently in the lives of billions of people in twentieth-century Europe and Asia.  Just as importantly, the centrally-planned socialist economy's demise coincided with the shift from nonindustrial to industrial economy (and de-industrialization in some cases) and the onset of ICT-driven globalization. Using theory, empirics, and selected country case studies, this book teases out the enduring lessons from the myriad and fraught pathways of transition from socialism to capitalism. <div><i><br></i></div><div><i>Understanding Economic Transitions</i> provides a self-contained, comprehensive, and authoritative treatment of modern economic systems.  This textbook has four features of particular use to students:  (i) Using the prism of comparative institutionalism, it melds theory and evidence to revisit the varieties of planned and market-driven systems today; (ii) It takes economic planning seriously in theory and practice (central, cooperative, or indicative) as the most prominent marker of the ever-changing boundaries between state and market; (iii) It focuses on the dynamics of systemic transition in formerly socialist countries by contextualizing them in terms of the <i>whence</i> (central planning), the <i>how</i> (modalities of transition), and the <i>whither</i> (illiberal or liberal capitalism) of politico-economic transformation; and (iv) It examines the profound impact on these structural processes of the post-1990 phase of economic globalization. With its clear, comprehensive content and useful pedagogical features, this textbook will prepare students to understand how economies transition and why.<p></p></div>