The concluding section of this issue of TF&SC attempts to summarize and supplement the findings reported in the articles regarding the type, qualities, and dimensions of the problems encountered when, after 40 or more years of command economy rule, there is a striving to introduce market economies. The primary difficulties are as follows: . The old system was living from substance, wearing it out, leaving deep scars behind: severe environmental decay, reduced human life expectancies, a worn-out and inadequate physical, economic, and administrative infrastructure. . Industrial structures are highly bureaucratized, inefficient, and monopolized, operating at very low productivities; there is underemployment and a lack of understanding of markets and market requirements and needs. . The countries were ruled by political, bureaucratized superstructures, controlled by secret police forces, some of which are still felt to be active. The difficulties to be overcome in transition to both democracy and a market economy are the following: Privatization issues: ownership questions, time- and resource-consuming procedures in settling ownership rights, establishing opening balance sheets/values of assets, debts, and obligations to be assigned for firms to be privatized. Reconstruction/rehabilitation of firms, industries, regions and infrastructures in decay; improving productivity, establishing/developing markets, and so forth. Problems of both structural and transitional unemployment, often in monostructured regions; retraining, upgrading, motivating, and, in some cases, moving people. Finding competent managers and people for industry, trade, and commerce, leading personnel for public administration and infrastructural organizations and institutions (for example, lawyers), as well as entrepreneur-minded people at large. Finding competent buyers for many thousands of enterprises, to start or continue to run firms under new conditions. Finding access to financial resources to cover needs in industry, trade, commerce, and infrastructure; to finance urgently needed rehabilitation of the environment. The summary uses the German-German case as a catalyst and point of departure, for both comparisons, analyses, and approaches proposed as well as malfunctions and blind alleys to be avoided. The difficulties encountered in the German-German case not only shed light on those (to be) faced in the other reform countries' transformation, under much less conducive conditions, but also illustrate why the Soviet perestroika attempts are doomed to failure. An analysis of value and behavior differences over time and in the countries discussed concludes the summary.