Following on from Jeffries' 2001 Economies in Transition: A Guide to China, Cuba, Mongolia, North Korea and Vietnam at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, this comprehensive survey of economic and political change focuses on the countries of Eastern Europe. Jeffries also discusses the general issues involved in economic transition, including `big bang'/'shock therapy', gradualism, China as an economic model and various schemes of privatization. The book examines Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Analysing major political and economic events in these countries from the mid-1990s to the present.