Economies in transition (NP)

Episode number 11 of Series “The Global Economy”.
This episode of the Open Learning Economics course examines the development of free market economic systems in the former communist states of Eastern Europe. The first episode looks at the emergence of liberal capitalism in Russia. The episode examines the benefits of opening Russia’s markets to the rest of the globe though it acknowledges that this embracement of capitalism, at an accelerated pace, has the potential to create devastating divisions based on wealth. The second episode looks at the success of capitalism in Poland which turned away from State Socialism in the early 1980s. In interviews with economists and Polish business people we are given an insight into some of the difficulties involved in dismantling a socialist economic system and replacing it with a market open to the international capitalist economy.