What Are the Lessons Learned From Post-Communism?

|Peter Boettke|

Dalibor Rohac discusses this important question in ths paper just published in Economic Affairs (February 2013).  

What would you list as the most important lessons to be learned from this experience?

Comments

[Rafe Champion]

The importance of the legal and moral framework which were practically obliterated for several generations in Russia and then attacked for a shorter period in the captured states after WW2.

The rate of rebound after the Fall of the Wall is probably proportional to the amount of those frameworks that survived. The legal framework is fairly visible but the moral framework is largely invisible and very much related to religion.

The problem for secular humanists like many of us, is to maintain the moral framework without religion, especially when it is under attack from Big Government and the Welfare State. Thanks to Dr Benjamin Carson for his strong statement in defence.

[Roger McKinney]

Very interesting analysis of the results of shock therapy. We have also seen 30 years of gradualism in China. China has had great economic success, but it appears that gradualism and not shock therapy will reverse things. The Communist party has hijacked the process and is claiming all of the credit.

Other research on the transition economies shows the extreme importance of property rights in attracting investment to enabled growth.