Publisher's Synopsis
The book draws attention to the highly distinctive features of Albania's 'transition', as well as those it shares with other Central and East European countries. The distinctive features include: very low income base; large proportion of the workforce in agriculture; quick and radical privatization of farmland, housing and small shops, which rendered most households property-owners; rapid restoration of macroeconomic stability (stable exchange-rate and low inflation); extensive emigration of working-age men; and a quite exceptionally high rate of economic growth in the four years to December 1996. The text examines the inter-relationships of these unusual features, including an account and a tentative analysis of the extraordinary events of 1997, with an attempt to explain why the failed financial institutions existed and behaved as they did. The picture is that of an extremely adaptable population that was beginning to exploit its comparative advantage internationally; a number of sound and successful economic policies but weaknesses in national institutions; a government with much to its credit eventually crippled by a backlash against its corruption of the democratic process; and a disaster in 1997 against which conventional wisdom had provided few defenses.
