ABSTRACT
The literature on economic transformation very often refers to macroeconomic indicators such as GDP per capita, economic growth rates and so on in order to measure the success or failure of economic reforms. Our research on political, economic and social transformations in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989 goes beyond that analysis at the macro-level, which is necessary, but by no means sufficient to describe the political, social and economic revolutions in Europe since the demise of Communism, let alone explain them. The collapse of the planned economy and the lack of new economic institutions at the very beginning of economic transition put all households under enormous pressure at the microlevels, because all the stabilities of the old economic system disappeared and left the households without basic reliable expectations about the immediate future. The households and their members were suddenly forced to rethink their portfolio of economic activities with the central goal of surviving financially and economically in the first stage of economic transformation. The crucial research question in that context was, which households were able to cope economically with the rapid economic change and which households had difficulties in adapting to the deep economic change at the macro-level and the consequences for the situation of households as economic actors at the micro-level.
