Income, Inequality, and Poverty During the Transition from Planned to Market Economy PDF Download

Author: Branko Milanovi?
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 9780821339947
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
World Bank Technical Paper No. 394. Joint Forest Management (JFM) has emerged as an important intervention in the management of Indias forest resources. This report sets out an analytical method for examining the costs and benefits of JFM arrangements. Two pilot case studies in which the method was used demonstrate interesting outcomes regarding incentives for various groups to participate. The main objective of this study is to develop a better understanding of the incentives for communities to participate in JFM.

Author: Lu Aiguo
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230503896
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
The Asian road to the market has generally been seen as a model of success and the object of widespread admiration. This volume evaluates the actual experience and debunks some of the most widespread myths. It does so by identifying the link between alternative transition models, public policies and household responses on the one hand, and key welfare changes on the other. Even in countries experiencing sustained growth, there have been unmistakable signs of deep social strain.

Author: Branko Milanovic
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Since the beginning of transition to market economy, inequality has increased in all transition countries. The factors driving inequality up: increasing wage inequality (as workers move from a relatively egalitarian state sector to a less equal private sector), and the rising share of income from self-employment and property (both very unequally distributed). Social transfers have failed to dampen the increase in inequality because they have remained, as under socialism, unfocused. The transition from planned to market economy has witnessed one of the biggest and fastest increases in inequality ever recorded. On average, inequality in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union increased from a Gini coefficient of 25?28 (below the OECD average) to 35?38 (above OECD average) in less than 10 years. In some countries, such as Bulgaria, Russia, and Ukraine, the increase in inequality has been even more dramatic, outpacing the yearly speed of Gini increase in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s by three to four times. What are the factors pushing inequality up? Milanovic constructs a simple model of transition defined as the removal of restriction on private sector development. As the private sector becomes free, it attracts workers who leave the shrinking state sector. Wage inequality in the private sector is greater than in the old, relatively egalitarian state sector. This is one of the forces pushing inequality up. The second is the growth of income from self-employment and property, both of which are fairly unequal sources of income both before the transition and now. In addition, some of the released state sector workers remain unemployed. Their incomes decline. Increased inequality is thus accompanied by the hollowing out of the middle class (where the middle class is defined as the former state sector workers). One part of state sector workers moves to higher incomes as workers in the private sector or entrepreneurs; another remains jobless. The model is contrasted with the actual developments in six transition economies: Bulgaria (over 1989-95), Hungary (1987-93), Latvia (1989-96), Poland (1987-95), Russia (1989-94), and Slovenia (1987-95). In all countries, wage inequality has increased (in some, like Russia, dramatically); income from self-employment has remained as unequal as before but its share in total income has risen, and the importance of social transfers in total income has increased, but its focus on the poor has not improved. This paper - a product of the Development Economics Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study social issues in transition economies.

Author: Branko Milanovic
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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November 1995 What happens to poverty and income inequality during the early period of transition to a market economy? Poverty is on the rise, and income inequality widens. Better targeting of social assistance and pension reform are the necessary policy reforms. In examining what happens to poverty and income inequality during the early period of transition to a market economy, Milanovic covers the period up to 1993. His analysis includes almost all transition economies that were not affected by wars, blockades, or embargoes. (In economies so affected, the intrinsic issues of transition are overshadowed by more basic issues of war or quasi-war economy and survival.) The two key issues of social policy in transition economies are pension reform and better targeting of social assistance. Pensions represent 70 to 80 percent of cash social expenditures. No reduction of current levels of social spending (which is unsustainable) can be envisaged without pension reform. Better targeting of social assistance is needed because many universally or enterprise-provided benefits have been terminated, poverty has increased, and social programs lack funding. If poverty is on the rise and money is scarce, better targeting is the only option. This paper -- a product of the Transition Economics Division, Policy Research Department -- is part of a larger effort in the department to study social effects of transition.

Author: Gerard Turley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136909087
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
Celebrating twenty years of transition from socialism to capitalism, this book is designed to be the core textbook for undergraduate courses in transition economics and comparative economic systems. Given the passage of time, Transition Economics: Two Decades On reviews and accounts for the outcomes in the so-called transition economies and, from an academic perspective, takes the reader through developments and issues in the twenty years of transition from plan to market. Treating its subject matter thematically, the book incorporates much of the transition economics literature and evidence that have evolved over the past two decades. In particular, the authors focus on the most important aspects of economic transition, including: The initial conditions at the outset of transition Paradigms and patterns of transition The main transition policies and economic reforms The performance of transition countries and firms The lessons from transition The textbook covers a wide range of both contemporary microeconomic and macroeconomic issues, in over thirty ex-socialist European and Asian countries, including Russia and China. Transition Economics: Two Decades On is more than just a book about a particular part of the world or the transformation that was experienced at a particular time in history. The authors believe that the study of the economics of transition gives the reader an insight into theories, policies, reforms, legacies, institutions, processes and lessons that have application and relevance, beyond the specific transition from plan to market, to other parts of the world and to other times in history.

Author: Sandra Hutton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134693494
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
This study addresses the experience of, and responses to poverty in a range of transition economies including Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Slovenia, Uzbekistan, Romania, Albania and Macedonia. It covers topics such as the definition of poverty lines and the measurement of poverty; the role of income-in-kind in supporting families; homelessness and destitution; housing; the design, targeting and administration of welfare; and personal responses to economic transition.

Author: Joanna Tyrowicz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Income distribution
Languages : en
Pages : 35

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Book Description
Income inequality in the context of large structural change has received a lot of attention in the literature, but most studies relied on household post-transfer inequality measures. This study utilizes a novel and fairly comprehensive collection of micro data sets from between 1980?s and 2010 for both advanced market economies and economies undergoing transition from central planning to market based system. We show that wage inequality was initially lower in transition economies and immediately upon the change of the economic system surpassed the levels observed in advanced economies. We find a very weak link between structural change and wages in both advanced and post-transition economies, despite the predictions from skill-biased technological change literature. The decomposition of changes in wage inequality into a part attributable to changes in characteristics (mainly education) and a part attributable to changes in rewards does not yield any leading factors.

Author: Aleksandr V. Gevorkyan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317567943
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary study offers a comprehensive analysis of the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Providing full historical context and drawing on a wide range of literature, this book explores the continuous economic and social transformation of the post-socialist world. While the future is yet to be determined, understanding the present phase of transformation is critical. The book’s core exploration evolves along three pivots of competitive economic structure, institutional change, and social welfare. The main elements include analysis of the emergence of the socialist economic model; its adaptations through the twentieth century; discussion of the 1990s market transition reforms; post-2008 crisis development; and the social and economic diversity in the region today. With an appreciation for country specifics, the book also considers the urgent problems of social policy, poverty, income inequality, and labor migration. Transition Economies will aid students, researchers and policy makers working on the problems of comparative economics, economic development, economic history, economic systems transition, international political economy, as well as specialists in post-Soviet and Central and Eastern European regional studies.

Author: Kerry Rittich
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047403193
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
In the last decade, market-centered economic reforms have been implemented in a wide range of developing and transitional countries under the auspices of the international financial institutions. Whether or not they deliver the promised prosperity, they appear to be associated with widening economic inequality as well as disadvantage for particular social groups, among them women and workers. Recharacterizing Restructuring argues that such effects are neither temporary nor accidental. Instead, efforts to promote growth through greater efficiency inevitably engage distributive concerns. Change in the status of different groups is connected to the process of legal and institutional reform. Part I analyzes the place of law and institutional reform in current economic restructuring policies. Through post-realist legal analysis and institutional economics, it discusses the role of background legal rules in the allocation of resources and power among different groups. Part II traces how disadvantage might result for women in the course of economic reform, through an analysis of the World Bank's proposals for states in transition from plan to market economies. It considers such foundational issues as the place of unpaid work in economic activity, as well as the gendered nature of proposals to re-organize productive activity and the role of the state.

Author: John F. Jones
Publisher: Nova Science Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
This book is about the social impact of reform in the transitional economies of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Whatever the advantages of adopting a market orientation, and there are many, the countries which have taken this road have had a high price to pay. If one were to ask a Siberian miner or a Ukranian woman selling vegetables in a village market whether the switch from socialism to capitalism was worth the rewards, the question would likely evoke complaints about months of unpaid wages or persistent poverty. The disappearance of the iron rice bowl in China draws praise from the neoclassic economist, looking on from the outside, but for the displaced worker going from city to city in search of employment, the reaction will not be so enthusiastic. In the move from central planning to a market economy, there have been winners and losers. The winners are those in a position to use the changing economic circumstances to their advantage, and those having access to the goods and services of the market. But there are also, among the poor and vulnerable groups, consistent losers in the shuffling of opportunities, rewards, and costs. The problems of people caught in economic reform are acute, whether the emerging economies are shaped by sudden revolution from within as in Eastern Europe and Mongolia, or by international pressure from outside -- frequently at the urging of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -- as in some African countries, or by the gradualism of socialist market systems like China, Vietnam or Laos. The social consequences of transition are significant, and they form the principal concern and focus of this volume. Its contributors, both authors andeditors, recognize globalization and the technological revolution already in place, and acknowledge the necessity for national economies to take advantage of the new freedoms and opportunities which the twenty first century heralds. But, while endorsing the efforts of countries to liberalize, to build their markets, and share the benefits of a world economy, the book's various authors are primarily concerned with the socioeconomic consequences of transition on the lives of people. The country case studies they present examine that impact.