Napredak u tranziciji, inicijalni uslovi i privreda Srbije
Transition Progress, Initial Conditions And The Serbian Economy

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses the relationship between initial inherited conditions and transition progress within transition economies. It is demonstrated that the transition process takes more time than expected whereas many countries find themselves still far away from the projected goal that is, from a developed market economy model. Re-questioning and reaffirming findings that have pointed out an endogenous charac- ter of transition progress and its dependence on various inherited conditions of a tran- sition economy, the author concludes that a vast majority of transition economies could not speed up their transition reforms. Thus, a prolonged transition process comes out rather in consequence of initial institutional and macroeconomic conditions than of the willingness of policy makers. Moreover, the impact of initial conditions remains strong and significant during the entire period observed (1989-2007) affect- ing transition achievements as well as economic performance of transition economies. Applying these findings to case of the Serbian economy it appears that transition de- lays in the country were not induced by initial conditions since they were fairly fa- vourable. This finding primarily applies to the period of the nineties but is equally ap- plicable to the period after the democratic changes since a new and remarkable slow- down in market reforms has been observed after the year 2003. It is shown also that the Serbian reforms have not been well balanced particularly in the field of institu- tional reforms and in the field of competition policy.

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