Socialist Economies in Transition provides a coherent critique of economic reform in Eastern Europe which, it is argued, will create not prosperity but high levels of unemployment and severe economic dislocation. The authors show how the application of neoclassical economic theory will, in reality, prove unsuccessful and explain why, despite the revolutionary upheavals of 1989 and the immense effort to discard the restraints of planning, the intuitive mechanisms and practices of the free market have been so slow to appear.This volume offers an alternative route to economic reform, based on post Keynesian and Kaleckian traditions that combine individual diversity with control over the key sectors of the economy to maintain an acceptable level of stability and growth.

This exciting and provocative book will be essential reading for all those concerned with the political economy of Eastern Europe.