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”.
Papers that my colleagues brought back to Kiel from conferences, together with the Kiel Institute’s own rich newspaper archive, were important sources of information. And we had to travel to eastern European countries to literally collect the information we needed and to connect with the people in charge. That’s how I became acquainted with Estonia and Eesti Pank.