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Wieser, Thomas --- "Unemployment, poverty and brain drain: summing up" [2005] ELECD 395; in Liebscher, Klaus; Christl, Josef; Mooslechner, Peter; Ritzberger-Grünwald, Doris (eds), "European Economic Integration and South-East Europe" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: European Economic Integration and South-East Europe

Editor(s): Liebscher, Klaus; Christl, Josef; Mooslechner, Peter; Ritzberger-Grünwald, Doris

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845425173

Section: Chapter 20

Section Title: Unemployment, poverty and brain drain: summing up

Author(s): Wieser, Thomas

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

20. Unemployment, poverty and brain
drain: summing up
Thomas Wieser

We know that the starting conditions for transformation in South-East
Europe have been considerably more difficult than anywhere else in Europe
because of the combination of three challenges: First, the transformation
from a market social system as in former Yugoslavia appears to be even
more difficult than from a truly centrally planned economy. Second, we
simultaneously had in this region the problem of state building, which most
other transformation countries (despite the drifting apart of a former
Czechoslovakia) did not have. Third, the problems of conflict and war.
The results have been a widespread combination of huge poverty, unem-
ployment, organized crime and a surging informal sector. All of that is
underpinned by weak institutions. By way of illustration, GDP per capita
in Serbia at the time of writing is just slightly more than half of what it was
one and a half decades ago.
What are the causes for high unemployment? What are the conse-
quences? Do we have possible remedies? How did we get here? Where are
we going? What are the chances for reforms from within? And what can we,
from outside, do to help, apart from giving good advice? These are ques-
tions to which we expected some answers from the preceding contributions
by Robert Holzmann (Chapter 17), Tito Boeri (Chapter 18) and Kalman
Mizsei and Nicholas Maddock (Chapter 19).
Basically the contributions of Holzmann, Boeri, and Mizsei and
Maddock, despite all their differences in ...