Co-author of Polish Economic Reforms to Speak about Transition Economies on Coursera

On November 24, an English-language course will begin on Coursera called ‘The Economics of Transition and Emerging Markets,’ taught by Marek Dabrowski, a well-known Polish economist and professor in HSE’s Department of Applied Economics.

Professor Dabrowski was co-author of the Polish economic reforms during their most difficult and intense stage in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1989-1990, he served as Poland’s Deputy Minister of Finance and was later an advisor to the Prime Minister, a Member of Poland’s Sejm and an advisor to the head of the National Bank of Poland. In addition to his position at HSE, he is currently a fellow under the 2014-2015 Fellowship Initiative of the European Commission, Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs. His academic research interests include, among others, monetary and fiscal policies, growth and poverty, currency crises, international financial architecture, and perspectives of European integration.

The series of lectures by Professor Dabrowski is devoted to the problems of so-called transition and developing (emerging) markets. Nine thematic lectures will each be divided into several video clips for the convenience of students.

How do the economies of developing and ‘transition’ countries work? What problems have they faced and which ones remain to be addressed? What are the reasons for these problems, including historical ones? Students will be able to learn the answers to these and other questions from Marek Dabrowski’s Coursera lectures.

The course begins with a brief history of the command economic system and centralized planning in the Soviet Union and the countries of central and eastern Europe.

‘We will study its evolution and breakdown in the late 1980s and early 1990s, says Dabrowski. ‘We will then analyze the experience of market reforms in China, India and other countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America during the same period. Finally, we will discuss the problems of global economics and management, paying particular attention to emerging market countries and their new role.’

This course will be of particular interest because the instructor is not only an academic, but also a practitioner who ‘had a hand’ in a real transformation from a socialist to a market economy in one of Europe’s largest countries.