Yugoslavia's Economic Crisis: the Price of Overexpansion

Yugoslavia is one of the rapidly industrialising countries which has had a record of very high rates of economic growth over the past decades and which is now balancing on the brink of bankruptcy. That its grave financial problems have not attracted as much international attention as those of, for instance, Poland, Brazil or Mexico may perhaps be explained by the marginal position that Yugoslavia occupies between East and West, both geographically and politically. A further explanation may be that so far, the crisis has not given rise to major domestic political upheavals. Moreover, the economy is relatively small, the population of Yugoslavia being only some 22 million.