The Role of Ex-Ante Evaluation in CEE National Development Planning: A Case Study Based on Polish Administrative Experience

The economic implosion that occurred after the liberalisation of the economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) was quite unexpected. A better understanding of the distortions that caused a massive fall in activity only emerged after the event, and served to distinguish two different but interrelated phases of transition. The first phase is associated with the initial years of transition and concerns such questions as institution building, privatisation, disorganisation, reallocation and restructuring. Such processes are unique to economies emerging from central planning in that they have only very limited counterparts or analogues in developing liberal market economies. The second phase concerns the later years of transition and assumes that a previously centrally planned economy has gone through a necessary critical mass of institutional and structural reforms which makes it appropriate to apply fairly standard macroeconomic concepts and theories commonly used for analysis and policy planning in market economies.