Abstract
After the collapse of communism and the start of economic transformation, post-communist societies began to experience price liberalization, a fall in output, a fall in labour force participation, the emergence of registered unemployment, a fall in government revenues, pressure on government spending, and budget deficits. Simultaneously, though, they faced a number of other problems, one of them being privatization, i.e., change in the ownership of productive assets, land, and housing.
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Notes
Cf. David W. Conklin, Comparative economic systems, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 294–9.
John Keegan, A History of Warfare, London, PIMLICO, 1994, pp. 306–7.
Michael Klein and Neil Roger, ‘Back to the Future: The Potential in Infrastructure Privatisation’, in Richard O’Brien (ed), Finance and the International Economy: 8, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 47–8,
Branko Milanovic, ‘Privatisation in Post-communist Societies’, Communist Economies and Economic Transformation, vol. 3, no. 1 (1991), pp. 5–39.
See also David W. Conklin, op. cit., p. 302, Table 9.1, and Bela Balassa, ‘Public Enterprise in Developing Countries: Issues of Privatization’, in Public Finance and Performance of Enterprises, Proceedings of the 43rd Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance, Paris, 1987, pp. 417–33.
On nationalization and privatization in France between 1981 and 1993 see Serge Halimi, Jonathan Michie and Seumas Milne, ‘The Mitterrand Experience’, in Jonathan Michie and John Grieve Smith (eds), Unemployment in Europe, London, Academic Press, 1994, Chapter 6.
János Kornai, The Socialist System, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992, p. 72, Table 5.1.
Peter L Berger, The Capitalist Revolution, Aldershot, Wildwood House Limited, 1987, p. 190.
Some views on privatization were summarized by Ian Jeffries, A Guide to the Economies in Transition, London, Routledge, 1996, pp. 48–56.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, Whither Socialism! London, The MIT Press, 1994, p. 192.
Peter Murrell, ‘Evolution in Economics and in the Economic Reform of the Centrally Planned Economies’, in Christopher Clague and Gordon C. Rausser (eds), The Emergence of Market Economies in Eastern Europe, Oxford, Blackwell, 1992, Chapter 3.
L. Haddad, ‘On the Rational Sequencing of Enterprise Reform’, The Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, vol. 11, no. 1 (March 1995), pp. 91–109.
The distinction between top-down transformation and bottom-up transformation was made by Horst Brezinski and Michael Fritsch (eds), The Economic Impact of New Firms in Post-Socialist Countries: Bottom-up Transformation in Eastern Europe, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1996, p. 1.
J.L. Porket in his review of the book by John S. Earle, Roman Frydman and Andrzej Rapaczynski (eds), Privatization in the Transition to a Market Economy: Studies of Preconditions and Policies in Eastern Europe, London, Pinter, 1993, in The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 72, no. 3 (July 1994), pp. 581–3.
Squatter sovereignty was regarded as probably the best single principle of initial property distribution by Martin L. Weitzrnan, ‘How Not to Privatize’, in Mario Baldassarre Luigi Paganetto and Edmund S. Phelps (eds); Privatization Processes in Eastern Europe, Basingstoke. Macmillan, 1993, p. 256.
A comparison of give-away privatization proposals is to be found in Daniel Gros and Alfred Steinherr, Winds of Change: Economic Transition in Central and Eastern Europe, London, Longman, 1995, p. 189, Table 8.1.
Cf. John P. Bonin and István P. Székely (eds), The Development and Reform of Financial Systems in Central and Eastern Europe, Aldershot, Edward Elgar, 1994.
On privatization in eastern Germany see Eric Owen Smith, The German Economy, London, Routledge, 1994, pp. 475–90, and
Herbert Brücker, ‘Selling Eastern Germany: On the Economic Rationale of the Treuhandanstalt’s Privatisation and Restructuring Strategy’, MOCT-MOST, vol. 5, no. 4 (1995), pp. 55–77.
United Nations, World Economic and Social Survey 1995, New York, 1995, p. 97, Table VI.1.
On small-scale privatization in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland see John S. Earle, Roman Frydman, Andrzej Rapaczynski and Joel Turkewitz, Small Privatization, Budapest, Central European University Press, 1994.
A model of the survival-oriented enterprise was developed by Barry W. Ickes and Randi Ryterman, ‘From Enterprise to Firm: Notes for a Theory of the Enterprise in Transition’, in Robert W. Campbell (ed.), The Postcommunist Economic Transformation, Boulder, Westview Press, 1994, Chapter 5.
On bankruptcy law and policy in some post-communist countries see OECD, OECD Economic Surveys: Hungary 1993, Paris, 1993, pp. 80–7, and OECD Economic Outlook, no. 55 (June 1994), pp. 116–17.
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© 1998 J. L. Porket
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Porket, J.L. (1998). Privatization. In: Modern Economic Systems and their Transformation. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26696-8_16
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