2011 Updated Reprint. Updated Annually. Eastern Europe Privatization Yearbook: Major Programs and Projects

This book provides an unrivalled overview of the privatisation issue within the region. Organised into two parts: the first discusses conceptual issues including the theoretical, political, and financial aspects; whilst the second looks specifically at the experiences within central and eastern European countries. Countries covered include: former GDR; Poland; former Czechoslovakia; Hungary; Russia; Romania and Bulgaria. This broad based overview pulls together much of the current thinking, debate and issues concerned with privatisation within this increasingly important area of Europe.

Hella Engerer analyses the emergence, evolution and theory of property rights and establishes the limits for privatization of state owned enterprises in the transitional economies of Eastern Europe. She counters the assumption that reduction of the state sector helps to create the basis for a private property system, showing that privatization actually presupposes a stable framework including property order. She makes use of an outstanding methodological approach, reaching well beyond the limits of pure economic observation. This is a major contribution to the understanding of the emerging economic order of Central and Eastern Europe.

This paper discusses several proposals for a wholesale privatization of public enterprises in Eastern Europe. These proposals include the distribution of quot;vouchersquot; to private citizens as well as the use of mutual funds, privatization companies and other forms of financial intermediaries. The paper analyzes the implications for economic efficiency of the different forms of ownership and control that would emerge from the proposals as well as their main macroeconomic consequences.

This volume is meant to be a modest contribution to the ongoing debate about the transitions away from the administrative planning environment typical of the former communist regimes. The central subject matter is a fairly special one, namely the privatization of these economies together with the restoration and effective monitoring of property rights. These are paramount tasks of the ongoing transformations once progress toward pOlitical democracy is secured. Though I would not allot divestment of existing state-owned assets the kind of pivotal importance that some observers reserve for it, changing rules on the utilization of these assets is evidently at the core of what the transition toward market-based economic systems should be all about. Rather than examining the entire range of issues that surround the controvery on privatization, this volume is primarily concerned with the economics of taking the state out of the decision making about existing assets. Among the several aspects of this discussion three stand out. One is the establishment of clear property rights. This is fundamental to minimize trans action costs in an environment where decisions will increasingly be taken by independent economic agents acting on their own account. Second, I look only incidentally at the various angles of creating capital markets, particularly for existing assets, in these economies.