ABSTRACT
Natura non facit saltum, but economies do - at least sometimes. One of these cases is the current transition of central and East European countries from command-type economies to free market economies. The intention of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the USSR (henceforth newly liberalizing countries: NLCs)’ to improve among other things their living conditions by liberalizing their economies, is in many ways associated with structural changes in their economies. This will be a natural consequence of the replacement of the state by private enterprises in many parts of the economy. At first, this seems to be only a change of ownership with no consequences per se for the structure and the efficiency of the economy. But fundamental changes can be expected as a consequence of the comprehensive replacement of central planning by free markets. Among others, this implies an abandoning of the autocentrated and autarkist development strategies and the implementation of policies directed towards an integration of the economies into the international division of labour. A different source of structural change will be the expected productivity and income growth of the NLCs. Even though there is still much debate about channels, extent and details of the proper relationship between structural change and rising income, numerous studies of the hypotheses of Fisher (1939), Fourastit (1949), Clark (1957), Chenery (1960) and others do not leave much reason to generally doubt these links. Since the question of structural change is basically one of the medium and long run, especially with respect to Eastern Europe, demographic and territorial factors must be seen as additional determinants of such changes.
