Understanding economic growth and development
in Central and Eastern Europe
Workshop on Economic History and Development
National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), Moscow, 2-3 September 2016
Keynote Speakers: Tracy K. Dennison (California Institute of Technology) and Leandro Prados de la Escosura (Carlos III in Madrid)
Central and East European countries (CEEs) had the planned economy past with its technological inferiority, unbalanced economic structure and multiple inefficiencies. It is widely recognized that all these factors made these economies inferior in comparison with the West. At present, after two decades of transition, the command economy rudiments are expected to be eliminated. However, in terms of GDP per capita CEEs are widely differ, starting from Slovenia, which has already achieved 70% of Germany, to Moldova with only one tenth. Probably, the roots of this divergence are to be found deeper in history far beyond the planned economy period.
The WEast initiative meets this challenge and intends to facilitate research in the centuries-long economic history of this region, calling together young researchers and senior leading experts in the field, such as Leonid Borodkin, Stephen Broadberry, Revold Entov, Herman de Jong, Branko Milanović, Andrei Markevich, Steven Nafziger, Şevket Pamuk, Nikolaus Wolf, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. The upcoming Moscow seminar is the fifth in a row of similar seminars, which took place or have already scheduled in Warsaw (2013), Belgrade (2014), Budapest (2015), and Prague (July 2016).
The Moscow seminar will be hosted by the Faculty of Economic Science and the School of History at Higher School of Economics. We invite both established researchers and graduate students to submit their papers considering various aspects of economic history of the region. We particularly welcome submissions that study general economic issues still relevant today or deal with less widely known aspects of Central and Eastern Europe’s development.
Local organizers: Elena Korchmina and Ilya Voskoboynikov
WEast organizers: Mikołaj Malinowski, Tamás Vonyó and Jacob Weisdorf
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