The patterns of economic transition in the Commonwealth of independent states

There are at least four important peculiarities of the CIS pattern of transition compared to that of the CEECs: reform was slow, whatever the criteria adopted to measure it; the output fall was larger and more persistent; there was no mass unemployment, especially at the outset, pointing to widespread labour hoarding. In turn, firms could keep all the available resources thanks to wage arrears and persistent soft-budget constraints; income inequality dramatically increased. To address these issues the paper proceeds by surveying the so-called Optimal Speed of Transition (OST) literature.