Turmoil at Twenty: Recession, Recovery and Reform in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

The transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, among all emerging- and developing-economy regions, have been hardest hit by the global economic crisis of 2008-09. This is partly due to the region's deep integration into the global economy across many dimensions—trade, financial, and labor flows. Attempts by countries that came later to the transition to catch up rapidly to Western European living standards at a time when global liquidity was unusually ab...