Jutta Günther is Professor of Economics at the University of Bremen.

Dagmara Jaje¿niak-Quast is Professor of Economics at the European University Viadrina.

Udo Ludwig is a Researcher at the Halle Institute for Economic Research and an Emeritus Honorary Professor at Leipzig University.

Hans-Jürgen Wagener is an Emeritus Professor at the European University Viadrina.

Explores institutional change and how it is impacted by economic transition

Examines how the role of entrepreneurship changed during the transition from socialist to capitalist economies

Highlights the relationship between technical progress, productivity, and economic growth

This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access

1. Introduction.- 2. From East to West: Modernization efforts in the northern and western regions of Poland (1944-1989).- 3. The importance of technical progress for economic growth in the GDR .- 4. Inefficiency and intransparency in East German foreign trade.- 5. Historical Legacies of Regional Innovation Activity.- 6. Catching-up modernization: Synthetic fibre in the GDR and Poland.- 7. The re-allocation of entrepreneurial talent over the course of radical institutional change - an institutional perspective.- 8. When backwardness became an advantage: Stays abroad as birth assist in Polish transformation.- 9. Transfer of knowledge from the outside or self-learning? Key success criteria for setting-up enterprises in East Germany and Poland after 1989.- 10. GDR's researchers catching up on their inclusion in international scientific communities.- 11. After 1989: Socialist elites and post-socialist transformations.