European Association for Comparative Economic Studies series – serie

This important book provides a comprehensive analysis of the impact of privatization on the economic performance of companies in Central and Eastern Europe. It sheds new light on the achievements and shortcomings of the privatization process and draws out lessons for the future.After considering the theoretical issues surrounding privatization, the authors provide an in-depth examination of corporate governance and company performance in advanced market economies as well as transition economies. They begin with a description of the main principles, techniques and results of privatization in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary and Poland. A statistical and econometric analysis of extensive company-level data and interviews from a large number of firms between 1990 and 1997 is then conducted to discover the main factors in changing economic performance. Using this information the authors compare the transformation of the company sectors in the four countries, and in addition assess company restructuring from the perspective of West European privatizations.Privatization and Economic Performance in Central Eastern Europe will be of interest to policymakers in governments and international organizations and those working in the fields of microeconomics, industrial organization and transition studies.

The decentralization of economic institutions in the West since the 1970s and in Eastern and Central Europe since 1989 is a significant and ongoing process which has implications for the nature of economic systems.This major new book explores the importance of institutions in economic systems and challenges the traditional assumption of antagonism between tendencies to centralize and tendencies to decentralize. An international group of authors from Europe and the US addresses different aspects of the centralization-decentralization issues including privatization, fiscal federalism, the recent experience of Russia and Eastern Europe, and the role of quasi-markets and non-profit organizations. Drawing on theoretical approaches and empirical material, they argue that the real achievement of efficiency requires the presence of certain key criteria in the structure of the market. Every move towards decentralization, such as privatization, is shown to entail counter-balancing moves towards centralization, such as the introduction of improved, central regulation.Economic Institutions, Markets and Competition will be welcomed for exploring the implications of centralization and decentralization in the transformation of economic systems and for emphasizing market structure as well as market competition.