Systemic Change: The Delicate Mixture of Intentions and Spontaneity
In this paper I shall not present a more or less standard and descriptive summary ofthe current stage ofthe transformationprocess in my country and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe. I find it appropriate to defend the achieved results because, in spite of all existing problems, this historic transformation process has been—in principle—successful. Nevertheless, it is our task to understand more deeply the fascinating social mechanism that makes such a process possible and to describe the delicate interplay of the political, social and economic factors at work. My theoretical background and my practical experience tell me that systemic change—and that is what we have been undergoing while dismantling communism in our countries—is an evolutionary process and not an exercise in applied economics or political science. It is based on a very complicated mixture of planned and unplanned, of intended and unintended events, or, to put it differently, on a mixture of intentions and spontaneity. By participating in such a process we have opened another chapter in the never completed book devoted to the study of the relative role of human action and human design in the history of mankind, the book devoted to the study of “made orders” and “catalaxies”—to use well-known Hayekian terms. I hope we can add something to that study. We may confirm that successful transformation isnot the result of detailed reform blueprints in the hands ofomnipotent reform politicians. Rather, success depends on the unconstrained activity of human beings together with “modest
Czech Privatisation 25 Years Later
Privatisation is still a hot political topic today and divides economists as well as politicians and the general public. The paper aims to capture the Czech privatisation in its historical, economic and political contexts. The first part explains the difference between transitional privatisation and standard privatisation. The second part examines the interests in the privatisation process. The third part discusses the privatisation methods used in the Czech Republic. The fourth part offers an international comparison.
Indexation in Israel
The spread of ‘two-digit inflation’ to many parts of the Western world has led in recent years to greatly increased interest in the possible use of indexation to deal with some of the problems which arise in connection with inflation that proceeds relatively at such a rapid rate. It is accordingly the purpose of this paper to indicate in broad lines what lessons we can learn about indexation from Israel’s thirty-five years of experience with it.1