Competition Policy and Transport — The Hungarian Case

Abstract

At the end of the 1980s, significant social and economic changes could be observed in Hungary. The GDP began to fall dramatically. New production and consumption patterns emerged. The direction and composition of the country’s foreign trade changed which had consequences for the amount and structure of exported and imported goods. The mobility of people and the movements of goods changed dramatically as well. The rigid evaluation by the real markets, which the country had to face, left many people jobless and made many products superfluous. The entire institutional structure of Hungary’s economy had to be reorganised. Another difficulty the country had to face in this period was the huge burdon the service of the public debt imposed. Relative advantages of the Hungarian economy were its openness and the legacy of — compared to the other central European economies — a semi-market atmosphere of the previous decade.