Title:	Economic Growth and Structural Features of Transition
Authors:	Enrico Marelli, Marcello Signorelli
Keywords:	Local Development
Issue Date:	2010
Publisher:	Palgrave
Description:	The aim of the book is to investigate, theoretically and empirically, some key aspects and differences of economic growth as well as the main structural features of development in transition countries. In the empirical analyses the two decades – from the 1989 fall of the Berlin wall to the 2008–2009 global financial crisis and recession – are generally considered. Most of the chapters refer to the European transition countries, in particular the new European Union (EU) members (NMS); however, in some chapters a comparative perspective (Eastern versus Western European countries) is adopted, in order to highlight the peculiarities of transition countries. The first chapter includes a thorough discussion of the main characteristics of transition and the key role played by institutional change in the transition toward ‘market economy’. This chapter is also useful for understanding the links, interdependences and complementarities between the different chapters as well as the rationale of their presence and sequence in the book. The chapters included in Part I investigate the main characteristics of economic growth and its determinants: the ‘new’ governance, human capital, social capital, and the trade-off between productivity and employment. A second group of chapters (Part II) deals with the structural features and regional performance of the development processes, encompassing such aspects as sectoral structure, the changing spatial distribution of economic activities and the increasing regional disparities; the new foreign relations of transition countries in the global economy, which are also discussed in Chapter 1, are further developed in a chapter dedicated to trade relations with the EU. One of the most evident effects of transition to market economies concerned the (structure and performance of) labour markets: it is known that in the ‘planned economies’ there was virtual full employment (accompanied by low productivity levels and dynamics), while during the transitional recession huge unemployment appeared. Thus, the following set of chapters (Part III), after an analysis of the changes in income distribution, investigates the institutional and structural characteristics of labour markets in transition economies, their performances, the ‘job quality’ and diffusion of irregular employment, the persisting imbalances (at the sectoral, regional or age-group levels).
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/27359
ISBN:	978–0–230–23570–0
Appears in Collections:	Regional and Local Development Studies

Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.