To the G8: Don’t Let Aid Perpetuate Barriers to Growth in Tunisia and Egypt

In this Bloomberg Echoes post, I argue that the United States should do whatever it can to promote economic freedom in the post-Jasmine Revolution Middle East and North Africa, and strongly support economic leaders who are committed to creating a private market economy. This is the lesson learned from the transitions from government control to market economies two decades ago in Eastern Europe, especially Poland and the Czech Republic. The U.S. government strongly supported those economic reforms—the removal of price controls, of barriers to new businesses, and of subsidies of old state enterprises, along with a restoration of the rule of law and property rights. And the United States also supported the reformers, including Leszek Balcerowicz in Poland, who carried out the reforms against much oppostion.

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