Geography Matters: The Past Leaves Marks on Institutions

Eastern European realities provide examples of the full range of possible experiments, be they successful or unsuccessful. Generously endowed by nature, once detached from the shell of the planned economy, Eastern countries applied economic policy recipes resulting in notable differences in terms of rhythm and end results of their objectives. The differences have primarily institutional origins. Private property and the free market are the informal institutions directly and substantially targeted. As a liberating unwinding gesture, the Easterners have always wanted to become owners, often at all costs. Dominated by this feeling, they fail to acknowledge or completely ignore that the usufruct rights can be more important than ownership itself. Bound by historically explainable property ownership, they see themselves caught in the insidious straps of some residual rights of control, disarmed witnesses of the exploitation of the substance of the ”free gifts” of their nature by others. The picture is completed by the presence, in the ocean of their very free market, of some transnational players. The chapter aims to identify who takes advantage of and who is granted resilience by such an economic show.