Privatisation in East Germany

The research on which the present paper is based was financially supported by the University of Paderborn.     

Privatisation and Transition in Albania

This article considers the privatisation policy and its role in the transition to a market economy in Albania. The disintegration of the old regime took place over a much longer time than in other Central and East European countries, resulting in chaos and a political vacuum in which no systematic or effective policy could be formulated. The new government, committed to fundamental reforms necessary for a market economy, did not take power until after the second general election in March 1992. One outcome of this long pre-transition period was that the privatisation programme had to evolve gradually in the course of transformation, without ever having been planned in a comprehensive and integrated manner. Privatisation proceeded on five different fronts: small privatisation, privatisation of agriculture, housing, small and medium-sized enterprises and mass privatisation. The article discusses the progress of each aspect and provides up-to-date information and data on their progress. The privatisation of agriculture and housing were the most crucial aspects of the overall policy, with significant impacts on economic growth and the progress of the transformation programme. The privatised agricultural sector grew very rapidly and made a major contribution to pulling the whole economy out of the 'transformational recession'. Privatised housing created a significant wealth effect amongst the urban population, providing many of them with collateral or start-up capital. The privatisation of state-owned enterprises, however, was carried out with much more difficulty and controversy. Although auctions were to be the main method of transfer, ensuring a significant income for the treasury, in practice many enterprises were privatised through other methods, bringing in less income and giving rise to allegations of political favouritism. Another aspect of privatisation was the weak corporate governance mechanism which replaced state ownership. Many small and medium-sized enterprises (probably about half) were sold or transferred to their employees, without any outsider interest. The performance of this sector has to be monitored closely in order to assess the impact of massive insider privatisation, reminiscent of Russia's privatisation programme. Mass privatisation too, by distributing enterprise shares amongst the general public, resulted in the increased power of insiders. The shares of nearly 100 enterprises were transferred to the private sector over the first year of the implementation of this programme. Although the privatisation programme progressed very rapidly, no serious attention was paid to problems of corporate governance. Without concentrated ownership or the involvement of financial intermediaries to oversee and monitor the managers, it is unlikely that the expected efficiency gains will be realised. The political crisis resulting from the collapse of informal financial schemes brought the whole reform process, including the privatisation programme, to a halt in early 1997. It is expected that, with a new government in power, there will be a new push for reforms and an increased pace of privatisation. It is hoped that the renewed efforts will also deal with the shortcomings of the previous schemes-particularly the corporate governance issues.     

Implementing Bank Privatisation in Slovenia

MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies -     

Cross-regional Competition and Privatisation in China

MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies -     

Privatisation in transition from central planning to a market economy in Czecho-Slovakia

Conclusions The success of privatisation is closely linked to the success of the transition policy. The lack of a capital market impairs any prospect of successful privatisation. The effects of macroeconomic stabilization policies on privatisation is controversial. Inflation may discourage investments in privatisation. Failure of competition policies may create private monopolies. Management incompetence may bring about PEs failures.One conclusion can be drawn from this picture: privatizing is a very complex undertaking. Its success requires very complex political efforts aimed at improving efficiency, competitiveness and modernization of Czecho-Slovak enterprises.     

Privatisation in Poland: Ten Years After

The purpose of this article is to compare economic discussion on privatisation, expected privatisation outcomes and actual results in Poland. First it discusses the privatisation of state enterprises in the broader context of the economic transformation programme designed and introduced at the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990. It examines the choice of privatisation methods, the political economy of privatisation and the three major policy issues: pace of privatisation, sequence of privatisation and the authority to initiate and carry out privatisation. The final section compares privatisation blueprints and actual results. The appendix presents a detailed technical guide to the privatisation methods in Poland and a basic set of figures illustrating the outcome.     

Has Productivity Contributed to China's Growth?

This paper applies an extended Solow approach to examine the role of productivity in China's economic growth. The extended Solow approach allows the decomposition of output growth into factor contributions, technological progress and efficiency change. It is found that total factor productivity (TFP) has on average contributed to 13.5 percent of China's economic growth in the past two decades. This contribution is mainly due to technological progress which tends to accelerate over time. However, during 1982–97 efficiency change due to catch–up has been very volatile, reflecting the uncertainties associated with economic reforms and transition in China.     

A history of resistance to privatization in Russia

We investigate the connection between privatization in post-communist Russia and a mass privatization reform in Imperial Russia, the 1906 Stolypin land reform. Specifically, we relate historical measures of conflicts associated with the Stolypin reform to contemporary views on whether the privatization of the 1990s should be revised. These historical measures could influence contemporary views in two ways: first, differences in privatization-related conflicts in the past could have directly altered attitudes towards privatization in the 1990s and, second, these differences could merely reflect pre-determined dissimilarities in preferences. We first show that historical measures of resistance to privatization are associated with views that favor state ownership. One standard deviation increase in the historical resistance to privatization explains a quarter of the negative sentiment toward private property today. We also find that negative experiences with the Stolypin reform are associated with views on the procedural unfairness of modern privatization reforms, suggesting that pre-determined preferences cannot fully explain the weight of history.     

Privatisation in Australia: Understanding the Incentives in Public and Private Firms

Privatisation has been an important tool of government policy in Australia and overseas in the last two decades. We explain recent contributions to research in privatisation, and apply a simple framework to ownership policy in a wide variety of Australian cases, including prisons, airports, Telstra, water and gas distribution, and ambulance services. The framework is not limited to these applications, and is aimed at providing a starting point for policy makers in their assessment of alternative ownership regimes. Our analysis is supportive of other authors, who have cast doubt on the wisdom of prison privatisation, and we extend this conclusion to ambulance services and the disposal of highly toxic waste. Application of our framework also suggests that Australian privatisations may have involved excessive separation of assets. The framework also provides a basis for arguing that a key monopoly component of Telstra—the 'wires' component—be kept in public ownership, and access auctioned to service providers. We consider the possible pitfalls of corporatisation policy, and argue that corporatised entities may operate to improve the appearance of success at the expense of the reality.     

Wage Bargaining,Privatisation, Ability to Pay and Outside Options: Evidence from Hungary

This article examines the determinants of short-term wage dynamics, using a sample of large Hungarian companies for 1996–99. We test the basic implications of an efficient contract model of bargaining between incumbent employees and managers, which the data do not reject. In particular, there are structural differences between the ownership sectors consistent with our prior knowledge on relative bargaining strength and unionisation measures. Stronger bargaining position of workers leads to higher ability to pay elasticity of wages, and lower outside option elasticity. Our results indicate that while bargaining position of workers in domestic privatised firms may be weaker than in the state sector, the more robust difference relates to state sector workers versus privatised firms with majority foreign ownership.     

导致我国上市公司出现财务舞弊的因素分析

我国资本市场目前得到快速的发展,取得的成就备受瞩目,但是随之而来的上市公司中出现的财务舞弊现象是越来越严重,这不但对上市公司的健康发展造成伤害,同时对资本市场的资源配置运行带来了破坏,并且使上市公司的财务报告和由此而形成的审计报告都丧失了应有的风险预警的作用。在总结原有研究结论的基础之上分析现在我国上市公司的财务舞弊的动机,并提出相应治理建议,以期对我国的证劵市场中的财务舞弊现象起到遏制的作用。     

Continuity Under a Different Name: The Outcome of Privatisation in Serbia

Normally, privatisation is seen as beneficial. This paper considers the case of Serbia – a latecomer in the matter – where privatisation was partly a result of exogenous pressures and where the process has been deemed a failure. In Serbia, a sizeable number of privatised firms were bought by bureaucrats and politicians and all firms were subjected to a period of supervision. We argue that the design of this process allowed rent-seekers to conserve their privileges through asset-stripping, which explains the failure. In order to do so, we perform an empirical analysis of the determinants of liquidation, merger and bankruptcy of privatised firms from 2002 to 2015. We construct a novel data set from primary sources, free of the ‘survivorship bias’ and containing proxies for various types of owners, indirect signs of asset-stripping strategy and a broad range of controls. Our results indicate that firms owned by politicians faced significantly higher risks of bankruptcy, especially after the end of supervision.     

How COVID-19 Medical Supply Shortages Led to Extraordinary Trade and Industrial Policy

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, a global shortage of hospital gowns, gloves, surgical masks, and respirators caused policymakers globally to panic. China increased imports and decreased exports of this personal protective equipment, removing supplies from world markets. Shortages led to European Union and US export controls as well as other extraordinary policy actions, including a US effort to reserve supplies manufactured in China by a US-headquartered multinational. By April 2020, China's exports had mostly resumed, and over the rest of the year its export volumes surged. But China's export prices also skyrocketed and remained elevated through 2020, reflecting severe and continued shortages. This paper explores these and other government actions, such as US trade war tariffs and US industrial policy in the form of over $1 billion of subsidies to build out its domestic personal protective equipment supply chain, as well as potential lessons for future pandemic preparedness and international policy cooperation.