Vonkajšia a vnútorná nerovnováha v stredoeurópskych tranzitívnych ekonomikách
EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL UNBALANCE IN EAST EUROPEAN TRANSITIONAL ECONOMIES

Summary/Abstract: The paper starts from the fact that external and internal unbalance are features which are mutually interconnected by numerous quantitative and causal links. From the purely numerical point of view external unbalance is quantitatively equal to the aggregate internal unbalance. That is to say, if one consumes more than is pro-duced at home, missing resources can arrive only from abroad. Much more important and complicated than quantitative connections are causal links. Identification of focal points where primary impulses of unbalance start, recognizing whether they primarily start at home or abroad, unwinding the complicated tan-gle of related causal links represents the first precondition of successful economic and political measures that should correct the unbalance. As for the unbalance factors which originate autonomously at home, the paper is not limited to global views of the economy alone, but analyzes also the development of household and public administration consumption as well as the development of gross fixed capital formation and tries to identify where in the CEFTA countries and in which of these spheres primary unbalance impulses acted in the years 1995–1997. In the household sphere in Hungary before the year 1995 and in the Czech Republic before the year 1997, consumption grew faster than the resources produced at home (GDP); anti-crisis programmes are thus aimed also at household consumption restriction, which one considers as correct. There has been a considerable household con-sumption growth in Slovenia, and in the years 1996–1997 also in Poland. Household consumption in Slovakia, on the other hand, cannot be considered a factor of unbalance. However, such an important problem of whether households represent a primary focal point of unbalance cannot be answered on the basis of consumption development alone. One should consider also further factors, among them relations of the growth of productivity and real wages. These relations too developed unfavourably in Hungary and in the Czech Republic before the adoption of anti-crisis programmes. On the other hand, from this point of view, one can describe the development in Slovakia on the whole as acceptable. As for public administration consumption, this can be denoted as an unbalance fac-tor in Slovakia: its share in the GDP is high and in the year 1996 extreme increases took place. This share was high in Hungary too, but has decreased considerably as a result of anti-crisis measures. One cannot indicate public administration consumption as a primary focal point of unbalance in other countries analyzed.

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