ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the context for entrepreneurship and SME development in post-socialist economies. After a short introduction, the chapter continues with a discussion of the processes involved in transforming a centrally planned into a market-based economy, which have implications for private sector development. Since the experience of the last 15 years or so has not been uniform across postsocialist economies, the second section summarises progress with market reforms in the former centrally planned economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, focusing on the five countries that feature later in the book. The third section concentrates specifically on the role of entrepreneurship in the process of transformation; the final section is concerned with the role of policy in relation to the development of entrepreneurship in a transition context.
