Proceedings of the First Roundtable Conference with the participation of Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Slovak and Sloven economists [antikvár]

It is my great pleasure to present the first volume of a new international economic journal entitled Transformation in progress. Its birth is the collective wish and endeavour of economists from five East Central European transforming countries, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. This journal is expected to create an appropriate fórum to publish the papers and studies to be presented in the institutionalized framework of cooperation among economists of the five countries. This volume includes the materials presented at the first East Central European Economic Roundtable Conference, organized by the Institute for World Economics (IWE) of the Hungárián Academy of Sciences, on March 2 and 3, 1994, in Budapest. In its policy-oriented research activities, publication and dissemination efforts over two decades, IWE had always been attaching utmost importance to the comparative analysis of the economic situation and prospects in the neighbouring countries, both on macro- and on micro-levelc Unprecedented changes produced after 1989 both in the individual countries and in the rapidly changing position of the whole region in the global and European setting have provided particular strong emphasis to focus even more on the evolving development trends. Sweeping markét economy reforms and fundamental steps of adjustment to and integration into the global division of labour were considered as the key factors of a historically belated but hopefully successful modernization process. In this context, internationally known economists from the Visegrád countries first met in December 1992 in IWE. The idea of initiating an institutionalizing a permanent dialogue, at regular intervals, among the more developed transforming economies can be dated back to this meeting. By complementing the group by Slovenia, the First East Central European Economic Roundtable Conference represents the first practical result of institutionalized relations. Transformation in Progress starts at a time where the East Central European economies have reached or are approaching a III