Issue 3, 2000

The study examines the impact of the economic shocks. Studied are the types of economic shocks, the reasons and forms of their revealing. An estimation of their revealing in the conditions of the countries in transition to market economy is made. Presented are possible approaches and methods for modeling and evaluating the shocks and are made estimations on data about the Bulgarian economy in the period of 1990-1997.

Standard theories of government in transition countries (Olson, M., Jr., 1995. Why the Transition from Communism Is So Difficult. Eastern Economic Journal 21, 437-462.) regard politicians and bureaucracies as "bandits" who extract the maximum resources from the public. Extraction is limited when the bandit expects to maintain power for a longer period of time and when the public can resist. When "bandits" try to gain wealth quickly and then leave, it is hard for them to work together - they become "disorganized roving bandits". In the transition, the public begins to act together to restrain the ability of the government to extract rents, changing the constraint faced by "bandits". The paper uses these principles to analyze the politics of transition in Bulgaria. While some political actors extracted rents for their personal use, others followed traditional authoritarian principles, producing the leader's idea of the public good - a concept of government as Leviathan. Four episodes of transition policy are considered. In each, the government followed policies that led to its collapse under citizen resistance. Either governments were too "disorganized" to carry out utility-maximizing policies, or they underestimated the willingness of the public to resist their policies.

This study is a philosophical, methodological, and theoretical analysis of the economic philosophy of Friedrich Hayek. It is structured as follow: introduction, four paragraphs, and conclusion. In the first section are analyzed Hayek's ideas on philosophical and methodological problems of economic knowledge. The second part is dedicated to conception of the Austrian thinker about paradigmatic significance of the market. In the third part are presented his views on relations between market competition, planning and democracy. The last one examines Hayek's approach toward property, justice and liberty.
The main points of the analysis put stress on some original and important for social science and particularly for economics Hayek's ideas: his integrative and interdisciplinary approach; his methodological individualism; problems of division of knowledge, of spontaneous social and economic order, of relation economics - law - politics; role of the market, competition, and the government in individual and social life of people.

The study analyzes the achievements and the remained problems in the field of expanding the tax base of the individual income tax in Bulgaria. The main conclusion is that the reserves in this field are significant. The expansion of the tax base is discussed as a necessary condition for a gradual decrease of the average effective tax burden.
Emil Panusheff - Problems of Interaction between Industrial Structure and Foreign Economic Relations
The structure of the commodity market in the conditions of the openness of the economy, branch changes and the shares of export and import in the production output are analyzed. The study of the mechanisms of sectoral policy in the European union attempts on the industrial policy and especially the role of the small and medium enterprises for the stimulation of the foreign economic orientation in the process of adjustment of Bulgarian economy to the Single internal market. The realization of the structural changes in the openness of the economy is analyzed in the context of Bulgaria's membership in the World trade organization and the possibilities for implementation of the selected instruments of the trade policy in the countries of transition. The proposals for the national policy to the development of foreign economic orientation of Bulgaria are formulate.

The main goal of transition is forming of market oriented business organizations. This study is focused on the problems of the Bulgarian firms' marketization process. Next the object of research is their marketing development. In attempt this process to be covered first of all the interrelated notions as ‘marketing development", ‘marketing power' and ‘marketing institution' are object of interpretation. After an attempt to describe the stages of firms' marketization, the attention is paid on the analysis of firms, which are in different stages of the process mentioned above. The research essence is the degree of marketization of 442 firms. The attention is also paid to the motor of the business organization and marketing development - namely the marketers and their specialized market. At the end of the study conclusions are done regarding the business organization marketization process evolution in Bulgaria in the 90s and its perspective development.