Suchergebnisse

I got to know Mait Miljan better in 1982 when the University of Tartu celebrated the 350th anniversary. Mait was one of the organisers. I then discovered that he had especially good organisational skills that became irreplaceable in developing the faculty work and were also very helpful in the foreign relations of our Faculty. He started his career as the marketing expert after graduating from Tartu University in 1963. In 1972 he successfully defended there his PhD in economics on the field of marketing. In 1974 he was elected as the Head of Department of Sales Management. He stayed on this position for ten years, during that period he became one of the best expert of sales management and marketing in Estonia. When the market economy was introduced in Estonia, there was no doubt that Mait Miljan was the best candidate to lead the newly created department of marketing. Virtually he had to start from scratch. His task was to develop a specialized programme of marketing studies and find new lecturers. He completed it successfully. As his achievements founding a new department were so impressive, then 1992 he was selected as the Deputy Dean in the faculty of Economics. His main research areas were the marketing management of the transition economy, value-based marketing management, cost and pricing, research and prediction of demand. He compiled two textbooks on these topics that helped several Estonian companies to shape their marketing strategy. He enjoyed doing research work together with his colleagues. His CV from the year 2005 counts 83 publications, from which the majority were written together with domestic and foreign co-authors. Mait always kept his word and was very accurate. It made it very pleasant attending the international conferences with him. Also he liked to live healthy and loved to do sports. He raised his children by these principles, organised lot of events for the family at his own-built cottage at Koolma Lake. He retired in 2005, but still had to continue teaching as a simultaneous retiring of the colleagues would otherwise have left too much teaching for younger teachers. The interests of the faculty and the department always came first for him. Unfortunately, he did not get to really enjoy his retirement as the beginning of 2007 he was diagnosed with cancer. Mait will be remembered as a hard-working, higly-principled poised man. Mait lives continously on both in my and my colleague´s memories.

Nearly twenty years have passed since the beginning of the transition from the planned economy to the market economy system in Estonia. A successful transition to a market economy requires a sound currency and Estonia introduced its own currency in June 1992. Estonia has been quite successful in achieving economic stability and growth and steadily declining inflation. An essential element of Estonia?s economic development success has been the currency board-based monetary system that has served as a signal of commitment to prudent monetary policy and as a guarantee of sound money during the transition period. We discuss the experience of operating the currency board in Estonia and future prospects of the currency board arrangement in Estonia in the framework of the European Union and the future joining the Economic and Monetary Union.

Over fifteen years have passed since the beginning of the reconstruction of the transition countries' banking systems. The analysis of the development of commercial banking in Estonia and other transition countries points out several features, which are typical for the starting period of financial sector reforms. It turns out from our research that the success of the reconstruction of banking sector in certain transition countries differs substantially. It turned out from the research that since the starting of reforms in 1988 the Estonian banking sector has passed two development periods ending with banking crisis. The first period can be named as a "wild" and the second as a "naive-optimistic" banking period. The crisis cleared the banking sector of weaker links and showed both the central bank and the management of operating banks the directions for improving banking regulations and management practices. In our study we do not deal only with the success of the reforms of a banking sector from the aspect of the growth of assets but we also pay a lot of attention to the changes in quality. We research the extent of the growth of the banks' creditability, the stability of their working results, the conformity of services to clients' needs, the harmonization of banking regulations with the European Union's requirements and the implementation of good banking practices. For today the transition period in Estonian banking has been actually passed. The banks operate in accordance with modern market economy patterns in every respect. But in several transition countries the reforms are quite in the starting period. The cornerstones of the Estonian banking sector reforms success have been both stable economic policy as well as reliable currency and the central bank's policy, which forces the reforms.