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Adjustment, Structural Change, And Economic Efficiency: Aspects Of Monetary Cooperation In Eastern Europe

Jozef M. Van Brabant
Reviewed by By William Diebold, Jr.
Summer 1988
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Jozef M. Van Brabant
Cambridge University Press
1987
480 pp.
$49.50

In this valuable study, a leading expert on the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA, or COMECON) deals comprehensively with the financial and monetary aspects of relations among the countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. His systematic analysis, building on much past work, shows clearly why efforts at "socialist economic integration" have had such limited results. National price structures are likely to remain a persistent obstacle. There is an interesting examination of East-West economic relations and those among the socialist countries. The book ends with 1986 and the author leaves until next time the effort "to take more fully into account the implications of the evolving transformations in Eastern Europe."

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