Defensive and Strategic Restructuring of Firms during the Transition to a Market Economy

We develop a theoretical framework and provide empirical estimates of the extent of several forms of restructuring in 130 privatized firms in a model transition economy (Slovenia) during the 1996-1998 period. In view of the institutional developments in the transition economies, we divide restructuring into defensive (related to short-term cutting costs) and strategic (focused on increasing revenues through investment). Using predictions from the theoretical framework, we estimate a firm-level labor demand equation to test defensive restructuring and an augmented investment equation to assess strategic restructuring. The labor demand estimates point to relatively slow defensive restructuring, while the investment model estimates indicate the presence of credit rationing and bargaining in most types of soft investment. We do not find support for the hypothesis that firms treat expenditures on employee training as investment, but there is evidence that they behave similarly as those from developed countries in that they display features of profit maximizing behavior.