Preface
The essays in this volume were discussed at the conference on 'Turkey and Central and Eastern European Countries in Transition: Comparative Study with a View to Future Membership of the EU', held on 9-10 March 1996 at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. Among the participants were economists from Turkey, Britain, Central and Eastern European countries, the OECD and the World Bank. The mixed composition of the participants - drawn from various Turkish universities, official agencies in Turkey, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Undersecretariat of Foreign Trade, the University of Lancaster, research institutions in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania, the OECD and the World Bank- provided for a wide-ranging discussion of the issues. As convenors of the conference we would like to express our gratitude to all the participants, including the contributors to this volume and their discussants, for their valuable contributions. This volume provides readers with a comparative analysis of Turkish and Central and Eastern European economies, and we hope it will inspire further work on similar studies.
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S. TOGAN
