Harvard Article Summary And Analysis

Harvard article summary and analysis.

After twenty-five years that the Berlin Wall came down and the countries that once were communistic had high hopes and reached for democracy and prosperity. Though since then hopes turned disappointment when almost all post-communist countries are failing since they have their economies full of poor pensioner and rich oligarch, bad politics. Wars are starting in those countries interfering peace in Europe. Since a quarter of a decade past this article is looking at statistics and trying to find out whether it is true that these countries are failing or not. The authors of the article found evidence opposing previously mentioned idea of failing post-communist countries. According to them countries have grown quickly and people of those countries live richer, longer and happier lives than before and today they are on almost the same economic development level as other countries.

To begin, these post-communist countries had to create new markets. All communist countries had planned economy where prices were not set by the markets but by planners so services sector was poor and heavy industry was dominant. When the Soviet Union collapsed this system was gone too and new leaders had to fight high inflation and economic crisis. But countries managed to deal with this problem and, according to the article, on average they became more market friendly comparing to the rest of the world. International trade grew as fast as ever since more private firms started and joined the global trade.