Transition of the Bulgarian Economy: 1990-1997
The immense political and economic changes in Central and Eastern Europe have created a variety of unique transition economies. Each country controlling its own development without fully understanding the implications of the monetary and fiscal macroeconomic policies it yields. Bulgaria in particular has had mixed results. A 1992 OECD Economic Assessment of Bulgaria described “shock therapeitic” reform programs that included the abolition of central planning, the liberalization of most prices, and opening more markets to foreign trade. While the survey concluded that “much has been achieved in extremely difficult circumstances,” by 1997, economic stability had not been realized.
Since 1989, several governments have presided, the banking system has virtually collapsed, GDP has significantly declined along with the lev, inflation is rampant, and economic policies fail to generate confidence. However, Bulgaria’s economic performance is decidedly “middle of the road” when compared to other transitioning economies. Declines in output and average real income are much greater and unemployment and inflation much higher than the Visegrad group and Baltic Republics though often better than Ukraine, Belarus, and the Russian Republics.
Many of Bulgaria’s current economic problems can be traced to economic conditions at the start of its transition. Heavy reliance on CMEA markets devastated the country , more so than any other country. Compared to GDP, over 60% of its imports and exports were orientated to the CMEA market. COMECON’s collapsed devastated Bulgaria, causing large initial declines in GDP and increases in unemployment. This event necessitated the complete restructuring of the modes of production. The complete upheaval of the Bulgarian economy forced a suspension of payments to foreign debts making it practically impossible to attract foreign/western investment to restructure the economy.
Current economic instability is due to the lack of decisive economic policy from the seven successive governments following the fall of Todor Zhivkiv the former Communist Party leader in 1989. While each succeeding government has remained committed to economic transition, their policies have lacked cohesion over important controversies such as privatization, subsidies, co-operation with IFIs, and foreign investment. The result of the different policies have resulted in much change but little progress with measures dealing with “soft budget” enterprises and banks, privitisation of state assets, and attraction of foreign investment. Ripples from the discontinuity of Bulgarian economic policy are evident in the rapidly accumulating domestic debt, payment arrears, and the continual refinancing of inefficiently run commercial banks.
The coins made in gold, silver and bronze were traded during Roman Empire and the shortage of coins created a barrier for money circulation. However with the establishment of paper money, a sophisticated banking, global clearing system and electronic money, the global financial system evolved with a worldwide framework of legal agreements. In the Global Financial market, foreign currencies issued by the world, countries are traded by the buyers and sellers using currency exchange rates. Now a day, it is very common practices of companies in one country to raise capital in a foreign country by listing their stocks on major foreign exchanges given the growth of equity markets are becoming more globalized (SNHU, 2015).
Once elected, Gorbachev set out to establish his power in the Soviet Union. Formerly a powerhouse during the early years of rapid economic growth, the Soviet Union was withering away due to the lack of cheap materials available, stagnant population growth, and a lack of trade and mobilization because of previous reforms ratified by Stalin. After years of inert growth during Leonid Brezhnev’s reign, the Soviet Union was in vital need of a new economy, a...
Born in a small village of Russia, Boris Yeltsin became the first president of Russia to be elected by popular vote. Although he was elected as a Democrat, he initially joined the Communist Party before later leaving them to join the Democratic Party. In august of 1991, when a coup of conservative communists tried to takeout Gorbachev, Yeltsin led an opposition to the coup, even though he had different beliefs than Gorbachev. During his first few months in office, Yeltsin was very unpopular to the citizens of Russian because many of the decisions made by him caused inflation. Despite the economic ...
The purpose of this investigation is to assess how significant Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost, and Perestroika polices contribute to the collapse of the USSR. In order to understand how significant of a factor Gorbachev policies were to the collapse of the USSR, we will investigate from how significant were the reforms emplaced by Gorbachev, to how the USSR was doing economically from the time Gorbachev came into power. The main sources for this investigation range from an Excerpt from The cold war: The United States and the Soviet union by Ronald Powaski who states facts about both the economic and political issues of the time. Excerpts from “New political thinking” from perestroika by Gorbachev which states how he believes new political ideas are for the good for the USSR. Finally in The Dissolution of the Soviet Union by Myra Immell who goes over many of the factors of the USSR’s collapse.
Russia, a vast country with a wealth of natural resources, a well, educated population, and diverse industrial base, continues to experience, formidable difficulties in moving from its old centrally planned economy to a modern market economy. President Yeltsin's government has made substantial strides in converting to a market economy since launching its economic reform program in January 1992 by freeing nearly all prices, slashing defense spending, eliminating the old centralized distribution system, completing an ambitious voucher privatization program, establishing private financial institutions, and decentralizing trade. Russia, however, has made little progress in a number of key areas that are needed to provide a solid foundation for the transition to a market economy.
In our society we have many issues that plague our youth. Problems such as substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, and verbal bullying are just a few of the issues. There is one issue that has been on the rise for many years, and is relatively new to the world; and that is violence due to exposure to violent video games. Research done by a panel of scientists led by Professor Rowell Huesmann found “Unequivocal evidence that media violence increases the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior in both immediate and long-term contexts” (qtd. in Anderson et al. 4). This research is very profound, but it does not state that a child will go to a school and shoot children because he played the game Call of Duty. While a child might not show major aggressive behavior because of violent video games, he will show minor increases in aggressive behavior because of the games he plays. These statistics are the same for adolescents as they are for children. Whether they realize it or not, everyone who plays a violent video game is effected in one way or another. Even though there is a rating system for games, that system is lacking in what they let younger children watch and do in these games. The question that must be asked is, “Why are these children being exposed to such violent content?”
Video games already have a bad reputation when it comes to the teenage generation. The video games that are being released in the past ten years have caused some speculation if they are suitable for kids to play. Some states have even tried getting involved with the issue by banning the distribution of offensive video games to minors. First-person shooting games have increased in popularity, and some experts say it is also increases violent behavior in the adolescents that are playing it. The increase of games that are more realistic, engaging, and increasingly violent will lead to more violent behavior in teenagers in the upcoming years.
The World Bank impacted political developments during the 20th century. For example, after the fall of communism in Romania the World Bank revived its relations with Romania by approving two loans to help finance Romania’s new government. Later the new government created new programs and reforms to free up prices and set up the basic laws and regulations required for a free market economy. This impacted the country in many ways since the price hikes were way to high causing protest across the country which caused the government to resign, and a transition government was created in September, 1991. During this transition period, the Bank renewed its partnership with Romania by giving more loans to show support of certain parts of the country’s reform program. The loans were successful in promoting trade.
One article points out that video games have a big impact on children’s lives and that many of the games played are violent. Researchers have found that “nearly all children spend time playing video games” and studies have found that “8th graders spent an average of 17 hours per week playing video games” (Tamborini 336). Moreover, 68% of the most popular video games contain violence (Tamborini 336). So it is clear that many children have access to violent video games and they have a big impact on their lives simply because of the amount of time spent playing them.
An Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol is the most used interior gateway protocol and computation intensive protocol where energy consumption in Internet Protocol (IP) networks is the main concern. The energy in an IP network can be saved by allowing a subset of IP router interfaces on sleep mode setting during the low traffic hours through the model of “move” by dint of an Energy Aware Routing (EAR) strategy, which is completely compatible with OSPF and is based on the “Shortest Path Tree (SPT) exportation” techinque or “Dijkstra's Algorithm”. In case of heavy traffic hours, the EAR strategy is not usable and may cause denial of service. The strategy implemented can help a network operator to control the network performance and allow a smoothed QoS degradation. This performance evaluation study permits to save about 30% of network links with a insignificant rise of link loads and network path lengths.
Turkey’s economy has weathered some spectacular pratfalls in the past, with a major economic crisis in 2001 almost bringing the country to its knees. What’s different in 2004 from the previous "recoveries" is how committed Turkey is to establishing firm economic footing once and for all. The government is swallowing the International Monetary Fund’s painful economic medicine, making tough choices for fiscal discipline.
In the aftermath of the USSR’s dissolution, one can establish clear patterns of economic development of the Black Sea countries: all of them are oriented towards a market economy with varying level of success. Many of these countries are pacing in the transition process, facing mainly the same challenges, that they should address with common efforts in order to achieve the best results. After the global economic and financial crisis, most of the countries of the region have received financial help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In today’s virtual society our office experience is getting more and more dependent on cyber culture. Due to the increase in employees working at home, virtual offices have become a convenient way for staff, clients, educators, students and all other types of business people to stay connected. Teleconferencing, skyping, e-mails, and texting have become mainstream ways of conducting business so it seems pertinent that businesses learn to effectively create and conduct virtual teams.
Today our world is surrounded by technology and new inventions that make our lives better. Some of the most popular of hobbies among children and teenagers are video games, but what many people don’t know is that they are bad for them. Violent video games in particular have been proven to not be appropriate for the age groups that play them and to have a negative effect on school, social behavior, and increase aggression.
Violent video games are special games, which negatively influences to the attitude and behavior. These video games are popular between children and teenagers. Since 1980-s years violent games are in political discussion. Because when teenagers usually play violent video games, they are becoming aggressive and then they face with psychological problems. For this, some people claim that violent games are harmful for society and they affect to behavior and health.