THE TRANSITION HOME PAGE
A political economy approach

Last updated 3 February, 2001
Jorge Braga de Macedo
© 7 August, 1996
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On  26 January, 2001 I presented Converging European Transitions  (which appeared as OECD Development Centre Technical Paper nº 159, July 2000 and was published in a special issue of The World Economy, vol 23 no. 10, November 2000, pp.1335-1365) at the Faculty of Applied Economics of the University of Antwerp during a conference on the enlargement of the European Union titled An Expanding Europe?

On 16 June, 2000 I presented Converging European Transitions at a meeting of the Macroeconomic Research Working Group of the European Centre for Parliamentary Research and Documentation (ECPRD), held in Lisbon (Portugal). The revised text is available here.

European Association for Comparative Economic Studies  (EACES)
The European Association for Comparative Economic Studies  (EACES) held its 6th Conference in Barcelona on September 7-9, 2000. I presented a keynote address on the Euro and international financial architecture, a preliminary version of which is available here.
EACES had a workshop in Paris at University of Marne la Vallée on 8-9 June,  its 3rd workshop in Budapest on September 3-4, 1999,  and a workshop in Paris on 22-24 March. The Executive Board met at the margin of each one of the  workshops.
At the 5th Conference of EACES held in Varna, Bulgaria on 10-14 September, 1998, I was elected to the Executive Board of EACES and presented a keynote address Converging European Transitions.
 
EBRD transition report EU on enlargement

 
From September 1998 to May 1999, I served as senior consultant to the Ministry of Finance of Slovenia, in a project on capital account liberalisation, with missions in September and April.
In  1998, I served as senior consultant to Belarus Economic Trends with missions in January, March, July and October.  My last contribution was on "Transitions perceived as reversible
I have helped the Business Forum, which takes place during the EBRD Annual Meetings.  In Kiev, Ukraine (1998), I prepared background papers for the workshops on EU enlargement and Creating a sound business climate. I also followed the seminar on the Euro. In Sofia, Bulgaria (1996) and London (1997), I was assigned to the Country Presentation Program.

Beginnings
My interest in the political economy of transition from plan to market began when, as director of national economies at the European Commission in Brussels I was assigned in June 1989 to represent Directorate General of Economic and Financial Affairs (DGII) in the task force designed to provide assistance to Poland and Hungary (PHARE).
Later I also participated in the task force for German unification and in the task force designed to provide macroeconomic assistance to the former Soviet Union. With Jean Louis Cadieux  for DGI I coordinated for DGII the Soviet Union Group for Assistance and Reconstruction (SUGAR) which prepared the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, signed on 18 December 1989,  from which  the PCA EU-Russia and  TACIS subsequently emerged. Some of these activities were reflected in "Stabilization Liberalization and Devolution; Assessment of the economic situation and reform process in the Soviet Union", European Economy, nº45, October 1990

Relevant academic publications are listed below with the serial number from the complete list:

117. Economic Reform in Central and Eastern Europe, The Next Steps (with Joan Pearce), in Politics, Economics and Western Policy in the Post Communist Era, edited by Dick Clark and M. Mandelbaum, Boulder: Aspen Institute, 1991.

119. Comment on Guillermo Calvo and Jacob Frenkel, The Transformation of Centrally Planned Economies; "Enduring Reform in Eastern Europe", in Central and Eastern Europe: Roads to Growth, edited by George Winckler, International Monetary Fund and Austrian National Bank, 1991.

121. The Path of Reform in the Soviet Union (with Jean Pisani-Ferry), in Preventing a New East-West Divide: The Economic and Social Imperatives of the Future Europe, edited by A. Clesse e R. Tokes, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1992.

130. Macroeconomic Policy in Central Europe (with William Branson) CEPR Discussion Paper nº 1195, Augusto 1995 and Nova Economics Working Paper nº 247, March 1995).

151. Macroeconomic policy and institutions in the transition towards EU membership, (with William Branson e Jurgen von Hagen), NBER Working Paper nº 6555, July  1998 (to appear in WIIW 25th anniversary conference volume).  An earlier version appeared as Nova Economics Working Paper  nº 295, April 1997.

156. Converging European Transitions paper presented at the EACES conference in Varna, Bulgaria on September 10 1998, forthcoming in Economic Systems