Iikka Korhonen noted that because the paper focuses on the optimal speed of reform, it would be informative to indicate which provinces are the closest to the estimated 3.5 percent optimal speed and which provinces are the farthest. He also asked for further exploration of the underlying story that could explain such differences.
Wing Thye Woo built on Korhonen's comment and argued that the optimal speed of reform depends on what type of reform is being discussed. He stressed the strong difference between European transition countries and China or Vietnam in economic structure rather than in economic policy. As pointed out by Justin Yifu Lin, reform in China basically meant industrialization, whereas the former Soviet Union states were already industrialized. In this respect, Janos Kornai's last book can be viewed as an alternative to Okun's law: It is the coherence of reforms that is important rather than the sequencing, and...