BUILDING THE KNOWLEDGE-BASED ECONOMY
IN COUNTRIES IN TRANSITION - FROM CONCEPTS TO POLICIES D Dyker &
S Radosevic Abstract
Conventional transition policies
of a predominantly macroeconomic character have done a good deal to create necessary
conditions for building the knowledge-based economy in the countries of Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union. Establishment of sufficient conditions for
such an evolution will require a different approach to policy-making, which will
range much more widely across the gamut of possible economic policies, but will
at the same time seek to bolster state action with the actions of private, voluntary
and semi-public organisations. Generalised government failure must be recognised
as a serious constraint on policy-making options, especially in the former Soviet
Union. Still, there is much that can be done under the rubric of traditional policy
areas like competition and regional development. What is absolutely clear is that
without rigourous supervision some areas that are crucial for the development
of the knowledge-based economy, notably the banking and public utilities sectors,
are very likely to fall prey to problems of moral hazard and abuse of market position.
By the same token standards of corporate governance will have to be raised. Only
in this way will the transition countries be able to develop the institutional
diversity and complex collective learning networks required if they are ever to
catch up with the advanced industrial countries. pdf
no longer available - this paper has now been published in Journal of Interdisciplinary
Economics, 12 (1) 2000. |
