liberalization, small-scale privatization and the opening-up of trade and foreign exchange markets were mostly complete by the end of the 1990s. However economic reform had slowed in areas such governance, enterprise restructuring and competition policy, which remained substantially below the standard of other developed market economies. According to Stuart Shields, liberalization of the ECE economies took place notably through various changes which were supported by the EBRD, for instance, set in different different steps. Firstly, measures of competition and financial discipline were put in place in the beginning. As part of the second wave of reforms, changes were focused on the opening of key parts of the economy to foreign competition in order to improve human capital and to foster entrepreneurship in those economies. Thus, they turned to labour market transformation by highlighting the need for a more flexible labour market. Furthermore, new institutional frameworks were needed, to help with transformations such as privatisation and the increasing flows of Foreign direct investment as part of what is described as “an institutional shock therapy”. Inequality of opportunity was higher in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia than in some other developed economies in Western Europe (except France, where inequality of opportunity was relatively high). The highest inequality of opportunity was found in the Balkans and Central Asia. In terms of legal regulations and access to education and health services, inequality of opportunity related to gender was low in Europe and Central Asia but medium to high in respect of labour practices, employment and entrepreneurship and in access to finance. In Central Asia women also experienced significant lack of access to health services, as was the case in Arab countries. While many transition economies performed well with respect to primary and secondary education, and matched that available in many other developed economies, they were weaker when it came to training and tertiary education. Over the decade 1994 to 2004, the transition economies had closed some of the gap in income per person with the average for the European Union in purchasing power parity terms. These gains had been driven by sustained growth in productivity as obsolete capital stock was scrapped and production shifted to take advantage of the opening-up of foreign trade, price liberalization and foreign direct investment. However the rapid growth rates of that period of catch-up had stalled since the late 2000s and the prospects