Yes Jim, there is too much on our plate. Unfortunately, marking essays and setting finals etc. does not give me time to respond to all the discussion but, a couple of points: a) no Louis, I was not talking about Bruno Hzladj, whom I don't know but Dimitar Mircev whom I have known for 10 years. b) in my original studies in Yugoslavia in 1987, the rate of income per capita Slovenia/Kosova was 5:1, at the end of the war, 15:1. i.e. there was considerable convergence until the interregional transfer of investment funds began to slow up. c) it is Horvat who rails against the Ward/Vanek model as empirically untrue -- in fact just the opposite. d) the problem with the guestworkers was not the cutoff of jobs, but the decline in remittances and the problem that added to the debt crisis already set off by American and German monetarism. e) Yugoslav trade before the collapse was approximately equally divided between the Communist countries and the west, but to pay the interest on the debt that was entirely in western currencies, it had to raise a surplus in the west. I deal with this in my February 1990 article in Monthly Review. So much more to respond to but I don't have time now. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
