Abstract EN:

Albania is the poorest and the less developed among the european countries that belonged to the socialist system of centrally planned economies, and that have moved towards the market. The dissertation shows how albania conducted a process of integration into the world economy, which transformed it from an increasingly closed and autarcic economy into an open economy trying to redefine and efficiently use its comparative advantages. The first part is devoted to the period 1940-1990. It desribes the foundations of the planned economic system and analyses the sequence of the conflictual relations of albania -with several countries : yugoslavia until 1948, the ussr until 1961, china until 1978. From 1978 until 1990 the country had a strategy of voluntary isolation from the world economy. The foreign trade policies and mechanisms are also analyzed, along with the specialization acquired by albania during this period. The second part is devoted to the transition of albania to the market after 1990. It studies the reasons of the political and economic collapse of the regime, the macro-economic policies of stabilization and the beginning of structural transformation (privatization, banking reform, etc. ). The new policies in the field of foreign trade and external relations are specifically analyzed, as well as the emerging new international specialization of albania as an open economy. The main thesis developed in the dissertation is that albania was a quite specific planned economy, maintaining a stalinist model up to the collapse of the system. Similarily, while applying the standard package of transition measures, it remains quite specific in its strategy of openness, and very different from the other countries in transition.