“In Vienna we specialised in smaller countries, because in Germany the main interest was in Poland and Russia… Dealing with neighbouring countries was really a niche market.”
“In 1972 the Cold War was still on, with frozen positions, the West, the East, the Iron Curtain. And yet Franz Nemschak established this institute in order to have a window on Central and Eastern Europe.”
“The real art of research was to interpret the official statistical data [of the communist countries of Eastern Europe]. Sometimes, they were completely wrong, sometimes misleading, and sometimes true.”
“Over time, one began to get a feel for what was credible and what was not.”
“Definitely, what made us unique was that we had economic time series on Eastern Europe. Almost nobody else had that, with the exception of the CIA and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.”
“They had no competition. They were really the first to provide serious documentation because the staff also knew the relevant language.”
“The institute’s role was particularly fitting for an era when Wandel durch Handel [change through trade] contributed significantly to the fact that systems changed.”
“From 1989 onwards, the institute took on a much more important role. We knew how centrally planned economies worked or did not work.”
“There was no one better placed to provide know-how for the transition than the wiiw.”
“The role of the institute increased enormously after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The institute was transformed into a great international research institute.”
“It became important to look across countries, but also to conduct comparative research on labour markets, on macroeconomics, on international trade and foreign direct investment, and on regional developments.”
“It took a very long time after 1989 for the quality of administration in the now new EU member states to reach an acceptable level for economically relevant statistics to be collected, evaluated and interpreted at a reasonable level.”
“After the East European countries joined the EU, we tried to reorient ourselves and in addition to pure East European research to work much more on European integration.”
In the institute’s early years, differences between the national accounts systems of the East and West were a significant topic.
Forschungsbericht Nr. 1
1972
Benedykt Askanas
Zur Berechnung des Brutto-Nationalproduktes in Osteuropa nach westlichen Methoden am Beispiel Polens
Energy price shocks and inflation are not just current phenomena; they were also strongly felt in communist economies in the 1970s, which in addition had their own structural (hidden) inflation problems.
Forschungsbericht Nr. 38
1977
Kazimierz Laski
Inflationsprobleme in den sozialistischen Ländern
Because centrally planned economies largely lacked information about market prices, alternative decision-making processes guided their investment policies.
Forschungsbericht Nr. 78
1982
Edward Kravchinsky
Faktoren des Entscheidungsbildungsprozesses bei der Investitionspolitik in der UdSSR
By the end of the 1980s, it became clear that centrally planned economies were facing significant problems, raising the question of whether they could be reformed at all.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the transition from a command economy to a market economy became the primary focus of analysis for wiiw.
Forschungsbericht Nr. 181
1992
Kazimierz Laski
Transition from Command to Market Economies in Central and Eastern Europe: First Experiences and Questions
Following a severe transitional recession in the early 1990s, the focus shifted to enterprise restructuring and economic growth.
Forschungsbericht Nr. 240
1997
Wendy Carlin and Michael Landesmann
From Theory into Practice? Corporate Restructuring and Economic Dynamism in Transition Economies
The mid-2000s were a boom period for Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, with most economies becoming over-leveraged on the eve of the Global Financial Crisis.
Research Reports 341
2007
Vladimir Gligorov, Sandor Richter et al.
High Growth Continues, with Risks of Overheating on the Horizon
In the early 2010s, the region faced high unemployment rates as the economies underwent painful deleveraging.
Research Reports 379
2012
Robert Stehrer, Terry Ward et al.
Sectoral Employment Effects of Economic Downturns