[PEN-L:4241] Re: Re: Re: Slovakia and the Czech Republic

[Dennis R Redmond <dredmond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote:

>      According to my handy dandy 1997 CIA World Factbook, the PPP per capita
> incomes in 1996 of the leading transition economies (in per capita income
> terms were as follows: Slovenia, $12,300, Czech Republic, $11,100, Slovakia,
> $8,000, Hungary, $7,500, Poland, $6,400, and Estonia, $5,560.

Yes, these are the PPP figures, which are notorious for making the poor
seem richer and the rich less rich than hard currency values per se. Even
if the Czech Rep. is in a recession, they're still at least twice as rich
as the other Central European countries. And of course Slovenia remains a
shining model of the industrial policies the Visegrad countries ought
to be implementing.

> CR.  Indeed, it may well be that the current difficulties there will move it
> more in a social democratic direction.

There's an interesting article in a book called "Paying the Price: The
Wage Crisis in Central and Eastern Europe", a collection of in-depth
articles about Eastern Europe in the Nineties put out by the folks at the
ILO, by Jiri Rusnok and Martin Fassman, called "The True Effects of Wage
Regulations in the Czech Republic" (pg. 140-181). It seems union density
is fairly high (around 30%) and that collective bargaining institutions
mostly modeled after Germany are beginning to take off, despite the
Gov't's superficial monetarist mania. Real wages crashed hard in 1991-93,
but began to recover thereafter. Obviously, any boom will have to be
supported by the EU externally *and* Keynesian policies internally.

-- Dennis