Course outline with dates:

Introduction: what is Comparative Economics about. How do we compare economies. Examples. (February 16^th)
Dynamics of economic systems. Development of the concept of property rights. Traditional economic systems. Islamic economics. (February 23^rd)
Market economy/economies - variety. Socialist alternatives: concepts, calculation debate. First summary. (March 2^nd)
Development of applied alternative models. Soviet-styled model of central planning: functioning and problems. (March 9^th)
Yugoslavian alternative: self-managed firms. Labour-managed firms: theory and performance. (March 16^th)
Theoretical explanations of the problems of Soviet and Yugoslavian model. Soft budget constraints. Second summary. (March 23^rd)
Transition back to market: ideas, implementation, early results. GDR as a special case. (March 30^th)
Holidays (April 6^th)
Focus on privatization: methods, effects on companies, implications for wealth distribution, elites. Midterm + third summary. (April 13^th)
Chinese economic model: history (April 20^th)
Current Chinese economic model? (April 27^th)
Russian turbulent 1990s. Current Russian economic model. Fourth summary. (May 4^th).
India, Vietnam, other interesting cases. (May 11^th)