Central and Eastern European Countries

Abstract

First of all, it is necessary to be precise concerning the geographical coverage of this chapter. European countries with transition economies are situated in Central and Eastern Europe and include Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzia, Latvia, Lithuania, Mace- donia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Yugoslavia. All of these countries, which are based on the ruins of former socialist systems that collapsed in the early 1990s, are now undergoing a transition from administrative to market economies. The real estate market has emerged as one of the essential elements of a market economy in those countries. In the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as in Poland and in Slovenia, the traditions of university education and of the market still existed. Real estate education is therefore more developed in those countries and they are not covered in this section, since they have their own chapters in this monograph.