This volume deals with the nature of the relationship between the countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and those of the Third World, offering some background to the decline in the Soviet Union's international position, both politically and economically.
The essays in this volume document the serious shortcomings of the Hungarian economic reform, which in two decades has brought deteriorating economic performance, declining real wages, a fiscal deficit and severe inflationary pressures. It has proved unexpectedly difficult to substitute a regulated market economy for a centrally planned one. The authors of these essays argue that the problems stem from the incompleteness of the reforms and their compromise character. Today, as the Hungarians prepare to implement more radical measures, constraining the Communist party and rolling back state ownership, they do so under economically difficult conditions.
The large-scale transformation of Kazakhstan’s power sector following independence in 1991 was reflected by the country’s move toward liberalizing the market and implementing sector regulation. As an early adopter of a liberalized multimarket model consisting of bilateral, spot, balancing, ancillary, and capacity submarkets Kazakhstan’s power sector was regarded a market reform leader among countries of the former Soviet Union, having achieved a much improved supply and demand balance and service quality. However, despite the noteworthy headway, sector reforms remain predominantly as unfinished business. The excess generation capacity that was inherited from the former Soviet Union at a time when the “energy-only†? market prices were too low to attract serious investors has masked the need to reflect on the long-term outlook of the country’s power production. As the investment crunch unfolded in the mid-2000s, a diverging concern almost immediately arose; that is, the capacity additions of existing and planned generations may not be sufficient to keep pace with the perpetuating and significant increase in the demand for power. Instead of applying market mechanisms to allow prices to rise and reflect the underlying supply and demand gap, the GoK addressed the issue by implementing administrative, command-and-control measures. This study draws on the World Bank’s long-standing engagement in Kazakhstan’s energy sector and a number of recent technical assistance and advisory support activities. The study aims to (i) objectively identify the principal challenges faced by the Kazakhstan power sector in its ongoing transition and outlining potential policy options; and (ii) draw lessons from Kazakhstan’s experience in sector reforms for the broader international audience. The study covers broader sector issues including long-term least-cost power system planning, supply and demand balancing, tariff setting, market structure, and integration of renewable energy.
This book provides a succinct account of what may happen to the energy sector in the former Soviet Union in the medium- to long-run under alternative scenarios for macroeconomic reform. The analyses reveal the serious damage of the oil resource base caused by the reckless exploitation practices of the past. Production of oil and coal can recover only slowly from the doldrums of the early 1990s, but the potential to expand gas output is very considerable. Energy consumption practices have been extremely wasteful in the past. The total savings potential that could be accomplished as energy prices are allowed to rise, and incentives to economise on energy use are introduced, is huge. The analysis of production, and consumption prospects is disaggregated by major republic. The likely evolution of FSU energy exports until 2005 is also explored, and the impact that changing export flows could have on the international prices of oil, coal and natural gas, is discussed in detail.
The essays in this volume document the serious shortcomings of the Hungarian economic reform, which in two decades has brought deteriorating economic performance, declining real wages, a fiscal deficit and severe inflationary pressures. It has proved unexpectedly difficult to substitute a regulated market economy for a centrally planned one. The authors of these essays argue that the problems stem from the incompleteness of the reforms and their compromise character. Today, as the Hungarians prepare to implement more radical measures, constraining the Communist party and rolling back state ownership, they do so under economically difficult conditions.
This volume deals with the nature of the relationship between the countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and those of the Third World, offering some background to the decline in the Soviet Union's international position, both politically and economically.
The large-scale transformation of Kazakhstan’s power sector following independence in 1991 was reflected by the country’s move toward liberalizing the market and implementing sector regulation. As an early adopter of a liberalized multimarket model consisting of bilateral, spot, balancing, ancillary, and capacity submarkets Kazakhstan’s power sector was regarded a market reform leader among countries of the former Soviet Union, having achieved a much improved supply and demand balance and service quality. However, despite the noteworthy headway, sector reforms remain predominantly as unfinished business. The excess generation capacity that was inherited from the former Soviet Union at a time when the “energy-only†? market prices were too low to attract serious investors has masked the need to reflect on the long-term outlook of the country’s power production. As the investment crunch unfolded in the mid-2000s, a diverging concern almost immediately arose; that is, the capacity additions of existing and planned generations may not be sufficient to keep pace with the perpetuating and significant increase in the demand for power. Instead of applying market mechanisms to allow prices to rise and reflect the underlying supply and demand gap, the GoK addressed the issue by implementing administrative, command-and-control measures. This study draws on the World Bank’s long-standing engagement in Kazakhstan’s energy sector and a number of recent technical assistance and advisory support activities. The study aims to (i) objectively identify the principal challenges faced by the Kazakhstan power sector in its ongoing transition and outlining potential policy options; and (ii) draw lessons from Kazakhstan’s experience in sector reforms for the broader international audience. The study covers broader sector issues including long-term least-cost power system planning, supply and demand balancing, tariff setting, market structure, and integration of renewable energy.
This book traces the role of Budapest building managers or concierges during the Holocaust. It analyzes the actions of a group of ordinary citizens in a much longer timeframe than Holocaust scholars usually do. Thus, it situates the building managers’ activity during the war against the background of the origins and development of the profession as a by-product of the development of residential buildings since the forming of Budapest. Instead of presenting a snapshot from 1944, it shows that the building managers’ wartime acts were influenced and shaped by their long-term social aspiration for greater recognition and their economic expectations. Rather than focusing solely on pre-war antisemitism, this book takes into consideration other factors from the interwar period, such as the culture of tipping. In Budapest, during June 1944, the Jewish residents were separated not into a single closed ghetto area, but by the authorities designating dispersed apartment buildings as ‘ghetto houses’. The almost 2,000 buildings were spread throughout the entire city and the non-Jewish concierges serving in these houses represented the link between the outside and the inside world. The empowerment of these building managers happened as a side-effect of the anti-Jewish legislation and these concierges found themselves in an intermediary position between the authorities and the citizens.
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