Wacława Starzyńska

Inflation processes in poland during the transformation period

From 1989 to 1997, the price of goods and consumer services rose very quickly under the influence of strong inflationary processes that took place in the Polish economy. Those processes were also present during the time of a centrally controlled economy. However, they did not appear as an open price inflation. This paper presents an analysis of inflationary processes before and during the transformation period. Special attention is paid to measuring inflation and to the utilization value of indices used for this kind of analysis. The most popular measure of inflation is the consumer price index (CPI). This paper presents a few examples of the many uses of the CPI. The focus is on the interpretation of this index which has special characteristics for the systemic transformation period taking place in Poland.

Demographic impacts in central and eastern European countries

All countries undergoing socioeconomic transformation in the central, eastern, and southeastern parts of Europe, regardless of the progress made in systemic transformation, have witnessed significant changes in their population. This paper presents some of these demographic changes and considers the dynamics produced by a drop in reproduction rates and the declining frequency of marriages. The intensity of these changes tended to vary. All of the countries, with the exception of Albania, are characterized by low birth rates approaching nominally the level of death rates. Infant mortality rates in the majority of the countries were relatively high at the beginning of the 1990s compared with their minimum.

Privatization of state-owned enterprises in Poland

The transition from centrally planned to market economies in Eastern Europe has become a field of debate in economic literature since the late 1980s. Privatization plays a very important role because it is also a sensitive political problem. Privatization is a key element of the several reform packages that are being applied in Poland. This paper examines the different ways that small- and medium-sized enterprises were privatized from 1990 to 1995 using statistical data of the Ministry of Privatization [1995]. Analyzed enterprises are presented by the following group of projects. Capital privatization, direct foreign investment, joint stock companies awaiting privatization, and other methods of privatization are connected with the special program designed for firms with bad financial standing.