Transformation in economics education in transition countries and international

visibility: The case of Balkan economists

Murat Çokgezen (Corresponding author)

Marmara University Department of Economics

Göztepe Campus 34722 Kuyubaşı

Kadıköy-Istanbul/Turkey

mcokgez@marmara.edu.tr

and

Jale Çokgezen

Marmara University Department of Economics

Göztepe Campus 34722 Kuyubaşı

Kadıköy-Istanbul/Turkey

jpala@marmara.edu.tr

(Published in Journal of East-West Business, Volume 21, Issue 2, 2015, pp. 91-101)

International visibility of Balkan economists in the post-socialist era1

Abstract

During the socialist era, economists in the Balkan countries rarely published their work in the

West due to political restrictions, methodological differences with the West and inadequacy in

Western languages. After the collapse of socialism, political barriers were lifted, a Western

style of education in economics was adopted and English began to be taught widely as the

common language in the academic realm. The aim of this study is to discuss the impact of

these policies on the publication performance of economists in the former socialist countries

of the Balkans region. The results reveal that the number of international publications

increased gradually over the post-socialist period and fast reforming countries performed

better than the slow movers.

1 Introduction

The majority of Eastern European countries were under socialist regimes for nearly half of the

20th

century. During this period, publications by these countries’ social scientists rarely

appeared in international journals. Underperformance of socialist social scientists in

international outlets may be attributable, at least partly, to the following factors: (1)

Methodological differences between socialist and Western social scientists. The educational

system, particularly in social sciences, in these countries was designed to disseminate socialist

values and advance Marxist theory. Alternative approaches were considered “bourgeois

attributes and revisionist wavering” and could be handled from a critical perspective (Taras,

2008). The aim of the academic works was to meet these targets rather than to answer a

research question according to academic conventions. (2) Restrictions on the flow of

information and movement of people. All of these former socialist countries had authoritarian

regimes of varying degrees. The regimes imposed restrictions on the relationships between

their citizens and the West in all spheres of life. This also applied to the academic realm.

Academicians connected with the West were regarded with suspicion, and access to Western

ideas was blocked (Sinitsiya, 1999; Polyak 2001). (3) Lack of competence in Western

languages. Due to the ideological character of the educational system, students were

prohibited or at least discouraged from learning the language of the perceived ‘enemy’ (the

West), English particularly, the lingua franca of the academic world (Pavlenko, 2003).

After the collapse of socialism, the economies of the former socialist countries were

transformed from central planning to the market system. Liberalization took place not only in

the economic sphere but also in political systems, and these countries over time often become

freer and more open. Policies that had previously restricted relations with the West were

replaced with those favoring collaboration. The educational system has become more

compatible with the West, and English became the most frequently taught language.2

Therefore, one may expect that researchers in these former socialist countries have overcome

the barriers that had hindered the researchers’ appearance in international journals during the

socialist era and their work now appears in international outlets more frequently than before.

This leads us to ask whether the visibility of researchers in former socialist countries has

increased in international outlets since then. Have the quality and quantity of their work

published in the outside world changed? What are the venues and characteristics of these

1An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Conference on Eurasian Economics 1-3 July

2014, Skopje, Macedonia. 2 http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t15458.htm

publications? Aiming to provide answers to these questions, this study, first, examines articles

published by economists from nine former socialist countries (Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia,

Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina [henceforth, Bosnia], Albania, the Former Yugoslav

Republic of Macedonia [henceforth, Macedonia-Moldova] and Montenegro) in the Balkans

region in international economics journals, after the socialist period. Results indicate that, as

expected, the number of articles by Balkan economists published in international journals has

increased over timeat different rates.

Is it possible to explain variations in publication performances with the variation in the scope

of liberalization efforts undertaken across the countries? In the second stage of our study, we

investigated the relationship between the publication performances of the Balkan countries

with the policies implemented. We hypothesized that countries that are more open and freer

would show better publication performance in international outlets. Our test results confirmed

this hypothesis as well.

Studies (Cokgezen and Cokgezen, 2014; Munich, 2006; Coupe, 2008; Kirtchik, 2012) have

evaluated the post-socialist era publication performances of other former socialist countries’

economists. However, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that evaluatedthe

publication performances of the Balkan countries. This study also contributes to the literature

that examinesthe determinants of publication performance. The results may also provide

insights for policymakers in developing their research policies, not only in the Balkans but

also in other parts of the world.

This paper is organized as follows. In the following section, we discuss the main

transformation in economics education after the socialist era. In the third section, we show the

publication performance of Balkan economists and examines the basic characteristics of these

studies. In the fourth section, we analyze how reform performances affected the international

publication performances of Balkan economists. In the final section, we offer an overview of

the findings.

2 The transition from socialism to capitalism and the transformation in economics

education

The transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy is characterized by a

set of economic and political reforms. Educational reform was also part of the big

transformation in post-socialist countries. During the socialist period, the educational system

was used as an apparatus of the socialist state to impose socialist values on citizens. After the

socialist period, the new governments restructured their educational systems to equip citizens

for the needs of the new order. In this section, we provide brief information about the reforms

in economics education in former socialist countries to understand how the barriers that had

hindered the former socialist economists from publishing in international journals during the

socialist era were eliminated.

Economics education in socialist countries was based mainly on socialist ideology. While

students were taught subjects such as Marxism, the history of the Communist Party and the

‘optimal functioning system for the socialist economy’ (a combination of marginalism and

socialism), they were completely unaware of the basic topic areas in Western economics

education, such as theories of the firm, utility function and public choice. Academicians fell

into two main camps: political economists and mathematical economists. The majority of

socialist economists were involved in political economics, which tried to explain economic

issues through a Marxist-Leninist ideology and a descriptive method, while mathematical

economics was a slightly ideological but highly technical discipline that required an advanced

level of mathematics and very little verbal explanation. Thus, mathematical economists

gained more recognition in the West, where their articles were translated and published in

journals (Brue and MacPhee, 1995; Alexeev, Gaddy and Leitzel, 1992).

After the collapse of socialism, a regime based on private property and market mechanisms

was adopted that was entirely different from the previous era. An urgent need for reform in

economics education adjusted to the new regime and for new economists equipped to meet

the needs of the new system arose. All ex-socialist countries took more or less similar steps to

meet these needs. Unlike in the former era, the countries collaborated closely with the

governments of other countries, NGOs and aid programs (Pleskovic et al., 2002).

The basic reform package in these countries consisted of reorganizing the curricula, adding

new standards to the student assessment system, liberalizing and privatizing textbook

publishing and reorganizing schools. Considerable amounts of financial and technical support

by foreign partners were used to educate students both domestically and internationally,

publish new books and reorganize schools and programs. Scholarships were granted, common

or exchange programs created and new educational and research centers established

(Pleskovic et al., 2002; Kirtchick, 2012).

However, these efforts did not result in the complete removal of the former educational

system and its replacement with a new one. Although the number of the new generation of

researchers equipped with the requirements of the new system and educated both domestically

and internationally rapidly increased, those who remained from the former system continued

to hold key positions. In other words, there was a gradual transition to the new order rather

than a sharp separation from the old (Androushak and Yudkevich, 2012; Pleskovic et al.,

2002; Kirtchik, 2012; Coupe, 2008). This transition was faster for institutions established after

socialism collapsed (Pleskovic et al., 2002).

3 The publication performances of Balkan economists (1980-2013)

In this study, the Scopus database was used in order to gain access to articles by Balkan

economists published between 1980 and 2013.3

Owned by the international publisher

Elsevier, Scopus is a bibliographic database that comprises about 20,000 journals of various

disciplines. The articles counted here were written by researchers affiliated with institutions in

the nine countries listed (above) and published in economics journals indexed in Scopus,

having thus made a contribution to the publication stock of each country.

A total of 2653 publications produced by Balkan economists between 1980 and 2013were

found in the Scopus database. During this period, there was a large jump in the number of

publications recorded. Only 17 articles linked to the nine countries were published in 1980-

89, which rose to 55 for the period 1990-99, while the main increase was observed in the

second part of the 2000s. More than half of the total 2653 articles published in the past 34

years were published within the last four (Table 1).

In terms of countries, the biggest contribution to the published articles came from Romania.

About 46% of the total published articles were written by academicians at universities there.

Romania is followed, in order, by Croatia, Serbia, Albania and Bulgaria. The contribution of

the other countries combined is less than 5% (Table 1).

Table 1 about here Considering the distribution of the articles by journal (Table 2), the top three journals were

published in Romania (Amfiteatru Economic, Economic Computation and Economic

Cybernetics Studies and Research, and Romanian Journal of Economic Forecasting). About

27%(702 articles) of the total articles published after 2000 appeared in these three journals.

These journals were followed by two journals (Ekonomski Pregled and Ekonomska

Istrazivanja) published in Croatia. About 12% of the total articles (318 journals) were

published here. These journals were followed by an Albanian journal, Mediterranean Journal

3Accessed on November 4, 2014

of Social Sciences4, which ranked second on the list, and by Economic Annals, published by

the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Economics in Serbia. The number of similar journals is

not limited to these journals. Journals not included in the top ten list, such asPrivredna

Kretanja I Ekonomska Politika (Croatia) and Ikonomicheski Izsledvania (Bulgaria), should be

considered in this group. The common characteristic of these journals is that they are all

published in the Balkans region and include articles written in English along with the regional

languages (Russian is regarded as a regional language since it has Slavic roots).

Table 2 about here The rapid increase since the mid-2000s can be explained by the fact that the journals in which

local economists published the most became included in the Scopus database. For instance,

the six journals at the top of the list with the most published articles began to be indexed in

Scopus after 2007 (Table 2). This applies similarly to other journals. As the number of the

journals indexed in Scopus increased, the number of internationally published articles also

increased.

Although the majority of the journals were published in the region and included articles

written in regional languages, the majority of the articles examined here were, in fact,

published in English. This also shows that the researchers of the region have made

considerable progress in English, the lingua franca of science.

A striking characteristic of the journals is that they included articles about the economic

problems of the regional countries and their transition from socialism to the new order. Apart

from the journals published in the region, a significant number of articles were also published

in international journals that publish articles on transition issues, such as Economics of

Transition (11 articles), Eastern European Economics (38 articles) and Post Communist

Economies (24 articles). With these countries beginning negotiations for European Union

(EU) membership (and some becoming members), articles related the EU were also covered

in journals such as European Research Studies Journal. Furthermore, mathematical journals,

such as Economic Computation and Economic Cybernetics Studies and Research, and

particularly Nonlinear Analysis Real World Applications, are placed among the top ten

journals, proving that the tradition of the mathematical economics of the socialist regime has

continued.

Considering the distribution of journals with published articles by country, similar tendencies

can be seen (Appendix1). Most of the articles written by Albanian, Bulgarian, Croatian,

Romanian and Serbian researchers were published in their own countries (respectively,

Mediterranean Journal of Social Science, Ikonomicheski Izsledvania, Ekonomski Pregled,

Amfiteatru Economic and Economic Annals). In addition, economists in Moldova, where

Romanians make up the majority of the population and Romanian is the official language,

mostly published in one Romanian journal (Romanian Journal of Economic Forecasting).

The now independent countries once governed under the socialist rule of Yugoslavia and with

common ethnic and cultural traits have continued their connections. For instance, the Croatian

journal Ekonomska Istrazivanja is the journal most preferred by Bosnian economists while it

is the second for Macedonians. Again, a Serbian journal (Economic Annals) is at the top of

the Montenegrin economists’ list.

Table 3 shows the universities with the highest numbers of published articles in each country.

All universities listed here are the oldest and largest state university in their country.

Considering the large number of faculty members, it is obvious why these institutions

published the highest numbers of articles. Along with these universities, private universities

such as University American College Skopje, in Macedonia, and American University, in

4Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences is published by the Mediterranean Center of Social and Educational

Research, an independent organization established in Italy.The organizationalso has a branch in Albania. Most of

theauthors of thearticlespublished in MJSS areAlbanian. Therefore,weconsideredthisjournal Albanian.

Bulgaria, which are comparatively new universities (established in 2005 and 1991,

respectively), have also begun to stand out.

Table3 about here

To sum up, data compiled from Scopus shows that the number of publications by Balkan

economists in international journals increased drastically after the transition and is increasing

rapidly. Data also revealed several characteristics about the publications. Balkan economists

prefer regional journals to publish their work, and the number of international publications is

increasing as more local journals are listed in international databases. Almost all of the

articles, particularly those written in recent years, are in English. The topics of these articles

are changing regarding the changes in economic and political environment; yet the

mathematical economics tradition inherited from the socialist period survives.Despite the

dominance of old institutions, new institutions established after the transition are contributing

to these publications at an increasing rate.

4 Freer countries publish more

Descriptive analysis in the previous chapter indicated that the transition from the closed,

repressive socialist economic and political model to more open, more democratic and more

market-friendly regimes, on average, increased the publication performances of Balkan

economists in international journals.Results also revealed that the publication performances

vary widely across the countries.

After the collapse of socialist regimes, all countries in the Balkans followed a reform path at

different speeds. While, for instance, Croatia and Bulgaria moved relatively fast in adopting

structural reforms, Montenegro and Serbia lagged behind.5Fast reformers performed better in

liberalizing their economic and political systems and joined the European Union by fulfilling

the necessary economic and political conditions, while the others remained outside.

It is widely believed that individual freedom of inquiry and the open exchange of ideas are

crucial for the development of new ideas, and in a free environment, researchers engage freely

with other scientists and with the scientific community and have easier access to information

and scientific materials. Thus, the variation in publication performances across the countries

may be attributable, at least partly, to variations in economic and political freedoms.

In order to test the relationship between economic and political freedom and the publication

performances of Balkan countries, we used a censored Tobit model. Using simple linear

regression would lead to inconsistent parameter estimates (Greene, 1993) since the

publication data has a lower bound at zero and many countries in Balkans had zero records for

many years.

The general model formulation with a limited dependent variable is given by Yit= Xtiβ+ εit,

where Y = Y* if Y* > 0; Y = 0 otherwise. In this model, Y*is a latent dependent variable; Xi

represents a vector of the explanatory variables; and β are the parameters to be estimated. It is

assumed that the errors are normally distributed, with mean zero and variance σ 2, ε ~ N(0,σ

2).

In our study, this model takes the form

PUBit=f (FREEDOMit, LOCJOURNit, POPit, INCOMEit)

Where PUBitis the number of publications by the economists of country i in year t;

FREEDOMit refers to the Freedom Index score of country i in year t; LOCJOURNit is the

number of local journals indexed in databases, and POPitand INCOMEit are the population of

the country and the GDP per capita (current US$) at each year, respectively. The Scopus and

Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) databases6 are used to reach publication records of the

countries and to find the number of local journals. Population and income data are obtained

5

For reform andtransitionperformances of thesecountriesseeEuropean Bank for

ReconstructionandDevelopment’sTransitionIndicatorsavailable at

http://www.ebrd.com/pages/research/economics/data/macro.shtml (accessed in November 3rd, 2014) 6Accessed on November 4, 2014

from World Bank data sources available at the bank’s official web site. Freedom scores come

from the Index of Economic Freedom created by the Heritage Foundation.7

Table 4 about here

Table 4 shows theregression results. The first model indicates a positive significant

relationship between the number of articles published in the Scopus economics journals and

freedom. The variable FREEDOM remained significant after control variables were added to

the model (Model 2). We rerun the same regression for the SSCI articles in order to see

whether the same correlations we found for the Scopus journals are also valid for higher-

quality journals. This time PUB refers to articles published by Balkan economists in SSCI

economics journals while LOCJOURN is the number of local journals indexed in the SSCI.

The regression results (Model 3 and 4) gave similar results. These results support our

hypothesis that freedoms and publication performance are positively related.

Moreover, in all models we found a positive and significant relationship between the number

of journals indexed in databases and population as expected. These findings are also

consistent with the results of descriptive analysis in the previous section. In addition, the high

number of indexed journals implies that journals published in the Balkan countries have made

the highest contribution to the visibility of the region’s economists. However, contrary to

expectations, the impact of income was either insignificant or too small.

4 Overview and conclusion

In the socialist era, economists in the Balkan countries rarely published their work in the West

due to political restrictions, methodological differences with the West and their inadequacy in

Western languages. After the collapse of socialism, political barriers were lifted, a Western

style of education in economics was adopted and English began to be taught widely as the

common language in the academic realm. The number of internationally published works

from these countries has witnessed a rapid increase, due to this transition. Moreover, as the

regression results indicated, the countries that went further in reforms performed better than

the slow movers.

As supported by the regression results, the main reason for this rapid increase was that the

number of regional journals included in the international indices increased.

Romania has the highest number of published works (more than 50% of those counted),

followed by Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria. The contribution of the other Balkan countries is

considerably lower. Countries with the highest numbers of published works have larger

populations.

A significant proportion of articles are now published in English. However, a considerable

number of the recently published works are published in either the scholar’s own country or

other countries in the region – particularly in countries with cultural connections. The number

of articles published in high-impact journals with international prestige is very limited.

The majority of the published works are related to issues in the region, problems regarding the

transition from socialism and integration in the EU. In addition, the tradition of mathematical

economics inherited from the socialist era is still influential in these countries.

Although the largest contribution of the published works of these countries comes from the

well-rooted, large state universities, contributions from the new, small private universities are

also growing.

7Available at http://www.heritage.org/index/ (accessed in March 13th, 2014)

References

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Soviet Union,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 6(2): 137–148.

Brue Stanley L. and Craig R. MacPhee. 1995. “From Marx to Markets: Reform of the

University Economics Curriculum in Russia” Journal of Economic Education 26(2):

182–194.

Coupé, Tom. 2008. “The visibility of Ukrainian economists 1969–2005,” The Journal

of Socio-Economics, 37(5): 2114–2125.

Çokgezen, Murat and Jale Çokgezen. 2014. “Internationalization of post-Soviet

Economists: Evidence from Central Asia and the Caucasus”, Journal of Economics

and Political Economy, 1(1): 26-38

Kirtchik, Olessia. 2012. “Limits and Strategies for the Internationalization of Russian

Economic Science: Sociological Interpretation of Bibliometric Data,” Laboratorium:

Russian Review of Social Research, 4(1): 19–44.

Pavlenko, Aneta. (2003a) "Languages of the enemy": Foreign language education and

national identity. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 6 (5):

313-331.

Pleskovic, Boris, Anders Åslund, William Bader, and Robert Campbell. 2002.

Capacity building in economics: Education and research in transition economies,

Washington, D.C.: World Bank, Research Advisory Staff.

Polyak, B. T. 2001. “History of Mathematical Programming in the. USSR: Analyzing

the. Phenomenon,” Mathematical Programming 91(3): 1–16.

Sinitsiya, O. 1999. “Soviet Union and its Cultural and Professional

Results for Arts and Art Libraries” INSPEL 33(1):35–42.

Taras, Raymond. 2008. Ideology in a Socialist State: Poland 1956-1983, Cambridge

University Press.

Table 2. Balkan economists’ most preferred journals (2000-2013)

Table 1.Distribution of articles by year and country (1980-2013)

Bulg

aria

Rom

ania

Cro

atia

Ser

bia

Bosn

ia

Alb

ania

Mac

edonia

Mold

ova

Monte

neg

ro

Tota

l

2013 18 228 85 76 5 191 24 5 5 637

2012 21 198 100 79 8 41 19 2 0 468

2011 18 159 91 43 8 5 6 1 4 335

2010 15 210 77 43 6 5 2 0 1 359

2009 21 221 69 25 1 2 6 1 1 347

2008 14 170 65 18 2 2 2 0 0 273

2007 11 7 27 8 2 0 0 1 0 56

2006 8 12 15 1 1 2 2 2 0 43

2005 2 2 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 8

2004 1 5 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 11

2003 7 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 13

2002 7 3 2 0 0 1 1 0 0 14

2001 6 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 9

2000 3 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 8

1990-1999 28 10 7 0 0 3 7 0 0 55

1980-1989 7 1 2 7 0 0 0 0 0 17

Total 187 1234 551 303 33 252 69 12 12 2653

1 Amfiteatru Economic (Romania) 288

2 Mediterranean Journal of Social Science (Albania) 255

3 Economic Computation and Economic Cybernetics Studies and Research

(Romania) 233

4 Ekonomski Pregled (Croatia) 182

5 Romanian Journal of Economic Forecasting (Romania) 181

6 Ekonomska Istrazivanja (Croatia) 136

7 Actual Problems of Economics (Ukraine) 93

8 Economic Annals (Serbia) 90

9 Transformations in Business and Economics (Lithuania) 58

10 Nonlinear Analysis Real World Applications 55

Table 3.University in each country with the most published articles (2000-2013)

University of Sarajevo 13 Bosnia

University of Tirana 83 Albania

University of Montenegro, 5 Montenegro

State University of Moldova 2 Moldova

SS Cyril and Methodius University 19 Macedonia

University of Belgrade 113 Serbia

University of Zagreb 130 Croatia

Bulgarian Academy of Sciences 27 Bulgaria

Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest 234 Romania

Table 4. Tobit regression analysis results for international publications by Balkan

economists (2000-2013)

Publications in Scopus Publications in SSCI

I II I II

CONSTANT -265,605

(66,7256)**

*

-208,571

(49,9499)***

-192,411

(51,2281)***

-111,076

(18,9982)***

FREEDOM 4,82522

(1,19036)***

3,34366

(0,809086)***

3,42922

(0,904894)***

1,88099

(0,323512)***

LOCAL

JOURNALS

24, 0616

(4,28100)***

34,6553

(3,93134)***

POPULATION 3,10295e-06

(6,06453e-07

)***

1,62310e-06

(3,57789e-07

)***

INCOME -0,00117983

(0,00145732)

-0,00167915

(0,000876003)*

N 109 109 109 109

Log-likelihood -458,8405 -404,4714 -410,2547 -342,4751

Standard errors are in parentheses. * p< 0.10, ** p< 0.05, *** p< 0.01

APPENDIX1 Three most preferred journals in each country (2000-2013)

Journal Country Number

Mediterranean Journal of Social Science

Albania

219

Eastern European Economics 4

Regional Science Inquiry 3

Ekonomska Istrazivanja

Bosnia

10

Economic Annals 4

Eastern European Economics 2

Ikonomicheski Izsledvania

Bulgaria

21

Eastern European Economics 8

Nonlinear Analysis Real World Applications 7

Ekonomski Pregled

Croatia

178

Ekonomska Istrazivanja 95

Privredna Kretanja I Ekonomska Politika 40

Mediterranean Journal of Social Science

Macedonia

12

Ekonomska Istrazivanja 5

Eastern European Economics 3

Romanian Journal of Economic Forecasting

Moldova

2

Czech Economic Review 1

Economy of Region 1

Economic Annals

Montenegro

4

Panoeconomicus 2

Courrier Des Pays De L Est 1

Amfiteatru Economic

Romania

280

Economic Computation and Economic Cybernetics Studies

and Research

228

Romanian Journal of Economic Forecasting 178

Economic Annals

Serbia

78

Actual Problems of Economics 50

Panoeconomicus 33