ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the main features of the economic systems and economic performance before the eighties. It describes systemic changes and economic debates which have been taking place during the turmoil of the eighties, and presents the economic movements of the eighties. The chapter analyses two of the most characteristic features of the Yugoslav economy in the eighties, namely inflation, which has acquired some characteristics of hyperinflation, and unemployment together with regional disparities. Although After 1952, Yugoslavia started to move away, step by step, from the centralized economic planning by reducing administrative constraints and by giving the enterprises a more independent role in decision-making. The economic situation, which by 1980 had developed into the most severe crisis in the Yugoslav economic and political system, prompted a new reform. The economic reform, which began in the eighties when the counterreform of the seventies was over, maintains the general characteristics of economic reforms in other socialist countries.
