Understanding the Baltic and Estonian puzzles : The political economy of rapid external liberalization in Estonia and Latvia
Feldmann, Magnus (10.11.2000)
Numero
2000-11Julkaisija
Suomen PankkiBank of Finland
2000
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:bof-20140808130Tiivistelmä
External liberalisation is usually hard to implement politically. Therefore the speed and depth of liberalisation in Estonia and Latvia raises a 'Baltic puzzle'.Estonia is also unique in that it has implemented free trade - the 'Estonian puzzle'.This paper uses political economy analysis of exogenous factors, interests, institutions and ideas to understand these two puzzles.The impact of the crisis of the early 1990s on interests and institutions is shown to be a precondition of the Baltic puzzle, but ideas and exogenous factors are more important in explaining actual policy choices.The Estonian puzzle is seen as the result of a unique configuration of political economy variables. Key words: political economy, external liberalisation, free trade, Estonia, Latvia