Economic Security and Stability in 1989-2005 Bulgaria

The attempt to describe the transition from the point of few of economic security is equal to rewriting the entire history of the last sixteen year of my and other post-communist countries. The reason is that so little attention has been paid to this aspect of reforms, that the picture looks very different, the life complicated and uncertain. There are no macroeconomic heroes and industrial champions, the reality becomes individual, i.e. composed of choices that individuals make, and some presumably insignificant societal groups become unexpectedly important.

In fact, what I discuss in the lines that follow are cases of spontaneity, economic instability and property reshuffling that cast light on the history of reforms in Bulgaria. This is not explanation but a different angle in comparison to mainstream "economics of transition" that looks at such basics as individual choices and property rights as peripheral constellations of political establishments and privatizations.

I do not have any specific objective in presenting this paper, besides attempting to demonstrate that these constellations are rather important for the understanding of what happened after the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989.

Bulgaria is a good country to look at: but I do not deal with the lucky side of the story, with the years of growth and incremental prosperity. My subjects are, first of all, constellations around redistribution of properties. Most of it happened in the past, between late 1980's and nowadays, but the story is far from finishing. So, there are no specific lessons about what countries should or should not do, what is the best or worst practice.

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