Small Businesses Trickling Up in Central and Eastern Europe

Small Businesses Trickling Up in Central and Eastern Europe

Author: Galen Spencer Hull

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-01-11

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1136530991

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First published in 1999. Small businesses now constitute the most dynamic element of growth in the emerging markets of the Central and Eastern European region. This book argues that the small and medium sized enterprise (SME) sector has contributed more to the growth of these countries in transition than have privatized state enterprises and the public sector. In 1989 most of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe were still under an economic system dominated by state-owned enterprises. Since then a process of liberalization has been unleashed to promote free market policies. This has involved programs of privatization and restructuring of public enterprises, as well as the promotion of policies to enable a private sector to develop. Small businesses are creating thousands of new jobs while large companies are "retrenching and downsizing" their work force. In some countries of the region this process is much further along than in others. However, the SME sector has developed at a more rapid pace than has the privatization of the large public companies. There has been a flurry of new enterprises springing up throughout the region which are "trickling up" in a frequently hostile environment against tremendous odds, and yet managing to have a pronounced impact on their respective economies. Small businesses have taken over in sectors that used to be dominated by big enterprises, primarily in services and consumer products. They have provided a crucial outlet for pent-up entrepreneurial talent that had remained dormant during the long period of state domination. This work urges legislators, policy-makers, and development agencies alike to take account of the importance of the SME's in their legislation and planning. Given a more favorable environment, these small businesses will provide even greater impetus for economic growth. Equally important is for entrepreneurs themselves to be convinced of the rightness of their path in societies that have traditionally looked down upon profit-seekers as unscrupulous and selfish. If the CEE region is to achieve its full potential of economic growth, policies and support mechanisms to promote the SME sector will be needed to assure a favorable environment.


Financial Crisis Management in Regional Blocs

Financial Crisis Management in Regional Blocs

Author: Scheherazade S. Rehman

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9401148643

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Financial crises have occurred throughout history, resulting in the loss of national and international public and personal wealth, creating political uncertainty and shaking the foundations of the national, regional and international economic and social order. This book provides answers to the basic questions of what could have caused some of the more recent regional financial crises, what their key characteristics were, how they could have been prevented, what lessons national governments, central bankers and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have learned and how such crises could be prevented in the future. The authors include current and former cabinet members of national governments, central bankers, IMF officials, scholars and practicing economists in both national and multilateral organizations, all of whom have either participated in the management of the various types of financial crises they analyze and discuss and/or have made major contributions to their understanding, including recommendations of how they could be avoided in the future.


Transnational Business

Transnational Business

Author: Galen Spencer Hull

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-03-26

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1135676410

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First Published in 1999. Small Businesses Trickling Up in Central and Eastern Europe argues that micro-, small, and medium-sized enterprises in selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have been the key to economic growth rather than privatized large-scale enterprises. Small businesses have come to constitute the most dynamic element of growth in the emerging markets of the CEE region in the last decade. In 1989, most of the countries of the region were still under the political and economic domination of the Soviet Union. Since then a process of liberalization has been unleashed in the region to dismantle statist economic policies and replace them with free market policies. This has involved programs of privatization and restructuring of state-owned enterprises, as well as the promotion of policies to enable a private sector to develop. Small businesses are creating thousands of new jobs while large companies are retrenching and downsizing their workforce. In some countries of the region this process is much further along than in others. In each country, however, the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector has developed at a more rapid pace than has the privatization of the large public companies. The privatization of small and medium-sized state-owned enterprises has been rather more successful. With the economic transition there has been a flurry of new enterprises springing up throughout the region, some registered as legal entities but many micro-enterprises often remaining unregistered in the informal sector. Micro-enterprises are increasingly seen as an important element of this SME sector, although they were traditionally treated separately as belonging to the informal sector and a detriment to economic growth.


Network Dynamics In Emerging Regions Of Europe

Network Dynamics In Emerging Regions Of Europe

Author: David A Dyker

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2010-04-21

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 1908978465

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This important book focuses on post-Lisbon Agenda issues of alignment and misalignment on different dimensions of European society and the European economy, including industrial systems, R&D systems, educational systems and job markets. It also looks in particular at the peripheral regions of Europe — the less developed parts of ‘old’ Europe, the parts of old Europe that are outside or only half-inside the EU, the new member-states of the EU, and Turkey as the most important EU candidate country. It takes as its methodological starting point the theory of network alignment as developed in SPRU, notably by Nick von Tunzelmann, and builds on this to produce an incisive assessment of the institutions, individual actors and markets that drive the knowledge economy. In all of this, it sets the European picture firmly in the context of global developments in investment, labour and intellectual property flows. Key authors include the editor himself, von Tunzelmann, Andrea Salavetz of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Matija Rojec of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia./a


The Economics of Regional Trading Arrangements

The Economics of Regional Trading Arrangements

Author: Richard W. T. Pomfret

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 0199248877

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Regionalism became a major issue in international commercial diplomacy during the 1990s. The European Union's 1992 program, the formation of NAFTA, and attempts to form or strengthen regional trading arrangements in South America, southern Africa, and Southeast Asia were all viewed as challenges to the nondiscrimination principle that had been the cornerstone of the postwar international trading system. This book provides a unified analysis of policies which discriminate among trading partners, featuring ample treatments of both history and theory as well as a review of empirical studies.