Publisher's Synopsis
Give a country a sound international trade policy and you have affected behaviour for a year, but give it the institutions to make sound policy and you affect it for a decade. More than any other countries, the new emerging economies have scope to heed this advice, and this book is designed to help a sub-set of them - Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Slovak Republic - to do so. The first part of this book looks directly at the way international trade policy in the CEECs has evolved under the Europe Agreements (EAs) signed between each of the CEECs and the EU, and at how trade policy institutions may be designed. The second looks at three areas of policy which should be complementary to trade policy: competition policy, industrial policy and environmental policy. In each case there are dangers not only that these policies could counteract the effects of sound trade policy, but that they could be established in such a way as to render them open to capture by the very forces which trade policy institutions have been designed to control. The book focuses closely on the European experience both in terms of the EAs, and in terms of the discussions of the actual institutions that have emerged so far. Its relevance is not restricted to the CEECs, however, for the other emerging market economies face the same challenges.
