Abstract
Newly liberalized countries in Central and Eastern Europe are managing to make rapid economic progress in a free market environment despite the lack of a Western style established infrastructure for generating business information. Argues that this is because: existing economic and business structures were not extinguished by socialism and sometimes became stronger as a result of suppression; the information generating infrastructure is as important as the information itself; and business information is neither uniformly critical for success nor reliable in the absence of people with suitable interpretive skills. Discusses each of these three issues in turn with examples drawn from a wide range of countries and including notes on the black and grey economies.
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