Synopses & Reviews
The rapid development of the services sector in domestic and international trade has been a major feature of the world's economic development over the last thirty or more years. At the same time, services, especially personal services, tended to be a neglected sector in the centrally planned economies. The vicious circle of "production for the sake of production" left little room for adequate production of consumer products, be it goods or services, and over the years this biased structure has tended to weigh heavily on the costs of transition. The country data show that the services sector in transition economies has become a major platform for new enterprise start-ups, where emerging enterpreneurs try their chances of delivering market-driven products to the consumer. Simultaneously, services are expected to play the role of a safety valve in coping with unemployment problems in relation to industrial restructuring. The future of transition economies will be largely determined by the rapid progress of information technologies and the resultant flourishing of electronic business and electronic commerce.