Yellow Light for Eastern Europe: Beware Four Economic Development Myths

Publication Date: November 1990

Publisher: Heritage Foundation (Washington, D.C.)

Author(s): William D. Eggers

Research Area: Economics

Keywords: Europe

Type: Report

Abstract:

East European economic reformers can avoid the mistakes made in Africa and Latin America if the reformers reject the development myths that have kept much of theThird World impoverished. Myths that economic growth requires substantial government spending on basic infrastructure and massive foreign aid are a prescription too for a continued impoverishment of Eastern Europe. These myths and others are mobilized by liberal Congressmen who argue for vast Western aid to Eastern Europe and by old guard communists in Eastern Europe who want to scare their fellow citizens away from the free market by arguing that the transition to a free market economy must be painful.