ABSTRACT
Vietnam’s economic renovation programme-Doi Moi-may properly be viewed within the dramatic historical movement occurring in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As they shared similar political and economic institutions, interlocked trade and financial networks, and major technical and information exchange programmes, momentous events in one part of the socialist bloc necessarily affected other parts. Furthermore, the systemic and institutional legacy Vietnam inherited from its experience with socialist transformation includes a rather large number of features shared in varying degrees with other socialist or centrally planned economies (CPEs). Both were typified by inefficient resource allocation, low mobility of factors, factor price rigidity, low productivity and income levels, obsolete technology, sluggish technical progress, and slow organizational adjustment (Svejnar 1991:123-38; Gelb and Gray 1991; Schmieding 1993:216-25), all of which emanated from the economicpolitical-social logic of Soviet-style socialist development. None the less, Vietnam’s transformation path has been conceptually and empirically distinct from European CPEs, due primarily to disparate initial conditions and long-term political goals. We will address these in turn.
