討論要旨

Professor Nishimura, Hitotsubashi University

Professor Nishimura began with comments on the paper Professor Kowalik had distributed prior to the workshop, which, he said, was quite close to the topic of the lecture he gave. In the paper, as in his lecture, Professor Kowalik considers the quality of the socioeconomic transformation in Poland and criticizes Western views which speak only of an economic boom. The paper addresses four main issues:

1. the negative aspects of economic performance in Poland during the 1990s;

2. the transformation of the ownership structure in Poland and the problems that have accompanied it. As Professor Kowalik stated in his lecture, in Poland a scheme of national investment funds was devised for the privatization process. However, only a small amount of state-owned assets were disposed of through this scheme, in part to foreign capital such as hedge funds which are not interested in the modernization of Polish industry. The state-owned sector still accounts for a large share of assets, particularly industrial assets, and this sector has been relatively flexible in adjusting to market economics and has shown relatively good performance. Political leaders, however, are discriminating against this sector, which is treated as an interim anomaly for ideological reasons;

3. the ideological reasons for specific features of transition policies, and in particular a political leadership prone to cater to Western concepts of market economy;

4. the peculiar situation that a previously leftist political elite (including former Solidarity activists) could make a nearly 180 degree ideological turn.

Overall, Professor Nishimura summarized Professor Kowalik's paper as arguing that for reasons of neoliberal ideology, both what is bad and should be overcome and what is good and should be developed in the Polish economy has been neglected by transition policies.

While agreeing that a balanced approach to the Polish situation is necessary and agreeing with Professor Kowalik's critique of radical shock therapy, Professor Nishimura suggested that the paper neglects the good side of Polish government policy and oversimplifies the transition process. In fact, the Polish government did have a clear and active economic policy:

1. it established a tax regime of accelerated depreciation, profit tax deductions, government guarantees for commercial bank credit, the obligation for joint ventures to export a certain amount of their production, and the introduction of special free economic zones. Some of these measures were aimed directly at export production, and some at the reduction of unemployment. Taking as examples the experiences of Japanese companies setting up production in Poland, Professor Nishimura noted that a joint venture by the National company producing batteries has been obliged to export a certain amount of its production by the Polish government, while Isuzu has invested in a plant to produce diesel engines in part because of the creation of a special economic zone by the Polish government.

2. it set up a number of organizations promoting industrial policy, including the Industrial Development Agency (established in 1991) which finances the restructuring of state enterprises, the Small and Medium Enterprise Credit Guarantee Fund (1994), the Export Credit Guarantee Fund (1994), the Polish Foundation for Small and Medium Enterprise Promotion and Development (1995) and the Technology Agency (1996).

These examples show a rather consistent and non-neoclassical approach to economic policy which may have contributed to economic development in Poland. In particular, Kolodko's policy line in the mid-1990s was quite different from that of Balcerowicz. While the mainstream of policy in Poland has indeed been neoliberal, many policymakers have been pushing in a different direction.

Professor Nishimura then made some comments on Dr. Szamuely's paper on Hungary and China. He began these comments by noting that a 1996 World Bank report on the transition economies had made the overall claim that quicker liberalization is better, and had developed indicators of internal and external liberalization and of privatization in order to test this claim. This report divided transition economies into 4 groups based on their economic progress:

1. a top group of Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland;

2. a second group represented by Bulgaria and Rumania,

3. CIS countries such as Russia and Ukraine, and

4. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Professor Nishimura pointed out that five of the seven countries in the top group are historically advanced in the field of marketization policy in that with the exception of the former Czechoslovakia they had all introduced significant market-oriented reforms before 1989. As a result, they had comparatively less to do to liberalize after 1989 than did such countries as Russia. For this reason, the World Bank indicators show that the speed of liberalization in the FSU has been much higher than that in central and eastern Europe.

In response to Professor Szamuely's comments regarding the contribution of FDI to the Hungarian economy, Professor Nishimura stated that while he mostly agreed with the talk, foreign capital had entered Hungary primarily to gain access to the domestic market and to prepare for Hungarian integration into the EU. He also asked whether domestic-oriented foreign capital can change direction towards export production and noted that the repatriation of profits is a problem.

Professor Suehiro

Professor Suehiro of the Institute of Social Science began his comments by expressing his shock and surprise at the content of Professor Kowalik's paper. Referring to a handout he had distributed which presented income distribution in a number of regions and countries, he showed that Hungary and Poland have in fact had rather egalitarian income distributions even relative to EU countries, let alone to some other parts of the world. Professor Suehiro's question relating to this issue was how we might explain social injustice in Poland after liberalization, as although many scholars have argued that social injustice is a direct result of the market mechanism, Professor Kowalik's talk suggested that it was the result of government failure rather than of the market.

Professor Suehiro's second question related to the political and social position of trade unions in Hungary and Poland. Comparing East and Southeast Asia with Latin America, he noted that while in countries like South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand labor has been repressed and expected to contribute to high economic growth, in Latin America ruling elites have invited trade unions into corporatist governments. However, although working classes in both Asia and Latin America were winners under these two different systems, the working class has continued to do well in Asia during the 1990s while in Latin America it has been a clear loser in the processes of privatization and liberalization. He thus asked what the position of trade unions has been in economic transformation in Hungary and Poland.

Third, Professor Suehiro asked both speakers about social policy, noting that free markets without social policy produce negative impacts and that even the World Bank has recently begun to emphasize a combination of free markets, institutional reforms and social policy. He noted that in Latin America governments have faced a contradiction between minimizing expenditures on social services in the context of growing unemployment while in Asia governments have relied heavily on the alleged ability of non-governmental organizations like village communities to contribute to social justice. What, he wondered, has been the social framework to reduce unemployment in Central Europe ?

Professor Kowalik

Professor Kowalik began his reply by noting that he recently wrote a large paper on Kolodko's economic policies. He argued that Kolodko did in fact continue neoliberal economics and that his line was in some ways even more severe than that of the previous government, including the introduction of legislation permitting evictions, an additional 15% tax on state firms, and increased salaries for CEOs. Kolodko was better than Balcerowicz however in not rushing privatization and in attempting to reconstruct industries such as coal and steel. Turning to the distribution of income, he expressed both surprise that Professor Suehiro's statistics were in some cases from as far back as 1992 and skepticism about the overall validity of macro-level data. On the trade union situation, he stated that unions basically don't exist in the private sector and have been able to hang on only in the "socialist dinosaur" enterprises where they are still quite strong and often destructive.

In response to Professor Nishimura's use of the 1996 World Bank study, Professor Szamuely argued that the World Bank would be unlikely to repeat such a project, the formalistic approach of which has been criticized by Joseph Stiglitz. He argued that a neo-institutionalist approach to the transition economies would be far more fruitful. Further, if one compares the list of transition economies which have produced real results with that of those which have become most open the lists are completely different. On the role of FDI, he accepted the argument that FDI into Hungary had at first been oriented to the domestic market, but stated again that this situation has changed dramatically in the last few years. In response to Professor Suehiro's question regarding trade unions he noted that, as in Poland, the old structure of unionism was destroyed in the early 1990s and has been able to hang on mostly in state-owned sectors like railways. The future of unions in Hungary is likely to be strongly connected to the future of unions in the EU.

In questions from the floor, Professor Nakagawa of the Institute of Social Science asked Professor Szamuely why it was that although most Central European countries have adopted similar policies on FDI and privatization, Hungary has been unusually successful in attracting FDI. Professor Huber of the Shizuoka Art and Culture University asked a related question on FDI, arguing that it has a serious long-term disadvantage in that it weakens the state's control over domestic economic priorities. Arguing that social policy failure can't be separated from FDI policy, she noted that none of the presentations had mentioned the possibility of positive economic nationalism in the region.

Professor Kowalik then asked Professor Szamuely why he had omitted the topic of the repatriation of capital, as net outflows of capital repatriation and debt are currently growing 7-9% a year in Hungary. He noted that only two European countries, Hungary and Ireland, are currently following the path of FDI-led modernization and that Poland too might be entering the Irish trap. Professor Szamuely responded by saying that this question was not entirely precise as debt service and profit repatriation are quite different. While repatriations in 1998 were over $1 billion for a number of specific reasons, in 1999 repatriations were reduced and net inflow of FDI was between $1.5 and $2 billion. He described the current situation as manageable and successful.

In two final comments, Professor Nishimura said of the World Bank data that their method of calculating the speed of liberalization was very reasonable, noting again that the speed of liberalization had been lower in Central Europe because those countries did not have as far to go as Russia did. Professor Kowalik concluded by arguing that the World Bank changes its reports, not its policies, and that Joseph Stiglitz had ended up being sacked by Lawrence Summers.

＜記録：Derek Hall＞