A penetrating look into the extreme plutocracy Vladimir Putin has created and its implications for Russia’s futureThis insightful study explores how the economic system Vladimir Putin has developed in Russia works to consolidate control over the country. By appointing his close associates as heads of state enterprises and by giving control of the FSB and the judiciary to his friends from the KGB, he has enriched his business friends from Saint Petersburg with prefe...

Ukraine may have taken a "gradualist" approach to economic reform, but the results have been no better than in Russia. The editors have assembled the leading specialists on the Ukrainian economy, including officials from major Ukrainian and international economic institutions, to outline the major problems of the economy, analyze the initial phases of economic reform in Ukraine, assess their outcomes, and chart the way forward.

The breakup of the Soviet Union and the attempted transformation of Russia into a democracy and a market economy constitute one of the most significant events of our time. A transformation could hardly be greater, yet judgments vary from failure to substantial achievement. This book clarifies that Russia has actually become a market economy.Anders Aslund provides the most detailed and insightful assessment to date of the Russian transformation from a socialist economy to a market ec...

Europe is in a serious crisis but that it can face up to these challenges. In Europe's Growth Challenge Anders Aslund and Simeon Djankov argue that the European Union can only be successful if it carries out substantial changes in the European economic system. European society benefits from equality in income, excellent healthcare and basic education, good infrastructure, and developed institutions for the rule of law. But Europe has entered a period of economic stagnation and is ...

The fall of communism transformed the political and economic landscape in more than two dozen countries across Europe and Asia. In this volume published on the 25th anniversary of the fall, political leaders, scholars, and policymakers assess the lessons learned from the "great rebirth" of capitalism and highlight the policies that were most successful in helping countries make the transition to stable and prosperous market economies. Also discussed in this book are examples of countries r...

Anders Aslund is known to make bold predictions that initially arouse controversy but soon become common wisdom. In Gorbachev's Struggle for Economic Reform (1989), he foresaw the collapse of the Soviet political and economic system. After Russia's financial crisis of 1998, observers declared the market economic experiment a failure, Aslund foresaw market economic success (Building Capitalism, 2002). In How Capitalism Was Built, 2nd Edition, he asks - and answers for the twenty-one countri...

Ukraine suffered unprecedented political, economic, and military turmoil following Russia's annexation of Crimea in early 2014. Russian military aggression in the east and a legacy of destructive policies and corruption have created an imminent existential crisis for this young democracy. Yet Ukraine also has a great opportunity to break out of economic underperformance. In this study, Anders Åslund, one of the world's leading experts on Ukraine, traces Ukraine's evolution as a market econ...

A penetrating look into the extreme plutocracy Vladimir Putin has created and its implications for Russia's future.This insightful study explores how the economic system Vladimir Putin has developed in Russia works to consolidate control over the country. By appointing his close associates as heads of state enterprises and by giving control of the FSB and the judiciary to his friends from the KGB, he has enriched his business friends from Saint Petersburg with pref...

" Pluralism by Default will change the way we understand the emergence of democracies and the consolidation of autocracies." —Chrystia Freeland, author of PlutocratsExploring sources of political contestation in the former Soviet Union and beyond, Pluralism by Default proposes that pluralism in "new democracies" is often grounded less in democratic leadership or emerging civil society and more in the failure of authoritarianism. Dynamic co...

Priests of Prosperity explores the unsung revolutionary campaign to transform postcommunist central banks from command-economy cash cows into Western-style monetary guardians. Juliet Johnson conducted more than 160 interviews in seventeen countries with central bankers, international assistance providers, policymakers, and private-sector finance professionals over the course of fifteen years. She argues that a powerful transnational central bankin...

The Soviet Union's dramatic collapse in 1989 was a pivotal moment in the complex history of Central and Eastern Europe, and Ivan Berend here offers a magisterial new account of the dramatic transformation that culminated in ten former Soviet Bloc countries joining the European Union. Taking the OPEC oil crisis of 1973 as his starting point, he charts the gradual unravelling of state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, its ultimate collapse in the revolutions of 1989, and the economic ...

This 2010 book makes two central claims: first, that mineral-rich states are cursed not by their wealth but, rather, by the ownership structure they choose to manage their mineral wealth and second, that weak institutions are not inevitable in mineral-rich states. Each represents a significant departure from the conventional resource curse literature, which has treated ownership structure as a constant across time and space and has presumed that mineral-rich countries are incapable of eith...