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
and
Jale Çokgezen
Marmara University Department of Economics
Göztepe Campus 34722 Kuyubaşı
Kadıköy-Istanbul/Turkey
(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
Alexeev, Michael, Clifford Gaddy, and Jim Leitzel. 1992. “Economics in the Former
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):
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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.
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
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