Transition to a market type economy: The case of Czechoslovakia

Conclusion The privatisation and liberalisation steps referred to are an expression of the endeavour to accompany stabilisation efforts as quickly as feasible with the institutional and systemic changes as well as with policies for restructuring, to change the behaviour patterns of economics agents. Until this change takes place, the more effective the restrictive policies are in the financial sphere, the higher the costs incurred in the real sphere will tend to be.The achievement of the desirable trade-offs between the conflicting aims of the macroeconomic development is thus linked with the degree of success in the changes of behaviour of economic agents. The macroeconomic stabilisation will therefore in the longer run depend on the extent to which the regime actually changes, on the positive destabilisation of economic agents and on the progress in their restructuring.In Czechoslovakia there does not therefore seem to be as clear-cut a distinction, as in other reforming countries, between the phases of stabilisation policies, institutional and systemic changes and those of the restructuring policies.The measures to transform the Czechoslovak economy and the implementation of these measures represent an attempt to proceed on a wider front, to take coordinated steps in all the relevant spheres, implying a greater degree of simultaneity. This is a reflection of the strategy chosen which aims at a qualitative change to be accomplished rapidly, taking into account the fact that the individual steps in the various spheres of the transition process are closely interconnected. The approach followed could thus be considered a strategy to introduce groups of complementary policy measures, that is to say, to make several reform packages and to implement them sequentially.