Many international advisors supported national policymakers in answering these questions and taking tough decisions. [13] Yet, it was difficult to grasp the close interlinkages between economic, political, and sociological developments over the decades that followed. Speaking personally, studying transition economies was one of my first academic projects.
I joined the Kiel Institute for the World Economy as a member of its newly established research group on transition economies in central and eastern Europe. Little could be found in the economic textbooks of the day about the “economics of transition”.