Money, Incentives, and Efficiency in the Hungarian Economic Reform

The essays in this volume document the serious shortcomings of the Hungarian economic reform, which in two decades has brought deteriorating economic performance, declining real wages, a fiscal deficit and severe inflationary pressures. It has proved unexpectedly difficult to substitute a regulated market economy for a centrally planned one. The authors of these essays argue that the problems stem from the incompleteness of the reforms and their compromise character. Today, as the Hungarians prepare to implement more radical measures, constraining the Communist party and rolling back state ownership, they do so under economically difficult conditions.

Josef C. Brada Professor of Economics, Arizona State University; editor of Journal of Comparative Economics and co-editor of Soviet and Eastern European Foreign Trade. Istváh Dobozi Department Head, Research Institute for the World Economy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.