A Normal Country

Andrei Shleifer, Daniel Treisman

NBER Working Paper No. 10057
Issued in November 2003
NBER Program(s):   EFG

During the 1990s, Russia underwent an extraordinary transformation from a communist dictatorship to a multi-party democracy, from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, and from a belligerent adversary of the West to a cooperative partner. Yet a consensus in the US circa 2000 viewed Russia as a disastrous and threatening failure, and the 1990s as a decade of catastrophe for its citizens. Analyzing a variety of economic and political data, we demonstrate a large gap between this perception and the facts. In contrast to the common image, by the late 1990s Russia had become a typical middle-income capitalist democracy.

(261 K)

Published: Shleifer, Andrei and Daniel Treisman. "A Normal Country: Russia After Communism," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2005, v19(1,Winter), 151-174.

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