In recent years, Europe and Central Asia has experienced the world's fastest growing HIV/AIDS epidemic. Yet, in the Western Balkan countries the HIV prevalence rate is under 0.1 percent, which ranks among the lowest. This may be due to a low level of infection among the population--or partly due to inadequate surveillance systems. All major contributing factors for the breakout of an HIV/AIDS epidemic are present in the Western Balkans. HIV/AIDS disproportionably affects youth (80 percent of HIV-infected people are 30 years old or younger). Most of the Western Balkan countries have very young p.

An analysis of post-Soviet state-building and of post-communist transition in Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus and Russia.

The Balkan countries have been looking for good examples and ideas to pursue development and internal integration in destabilized and ethnically complex and conflicting areas. This book about transformation in the framework of European outlines the path of the Balkans to European integration.

This publication assesses the untapped growth potential of foreign investment in Romania, measures the significant progress made in the last few years to improve its business environment and identifies the most significant remaining policy challenges.

Staying at the pinnacle of the advancing business development of transition economies and the impact of changing business conditions is a challenging task for all firms wanting to do business in them. This book provides insight into the way in which businesses function with a comprehensive overview of the major aspects involved.

This volume brings together young researchers in an interdisciplinary study of Greek interaction with other Balkan states over the past two hundred years. The thirteen chapters of the volume reflect the diversity of a long and complex relationship between Greece and its Balkan neighbours. They thus shed refreshing light on its persistent attributes of opportunity and risk, attraction and enmity, exchange and exclusion, through exploration of historical, anthropological, literary, political and economic perspectives.

Before the latest EU enlargement substantial changes in the integration process were predicted as a result of the accession of 10 new member states, with some forecasting cataclysmic consequences. This book, the first ex post assessment of EU enlargement, provides evidence to the contrary, while also providing examples in which the new members have been able to influence the EU policy output with their liberal attitudes on economic and social policy.

Editors David Macey, William Pyle, and Stephen Wegren, with a host of world-leading agrarian analyst and practitioners, unravel the shortcomings surrounding post-communist agrarian reform and answers how and why particular policies were adopted in Eurasia. Building Market Institutions in Post-Communist Agriculture draws on country-level case studies to analyze a range of initiatives that institutions have applied to agricultural economies. In this edited collection, contributors use a comparative analytical framework to project a universal process of agrarian transformation that continues to change the social, economic, and political characteristics of this part of the world.