Several East European countries are embarking on major programmes both to expand their private sectors by encouraging new firm formation, and to transfer much of the existing state sector into private ownership. This paper studies the early experience of Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia in...

A key feature of Soviet-type economies is the excessive concentration of production and the skewed size distribution of enterprises. This is the root cause of the `soft budget constraint' and a natural outcome of the political economy of these countries. Given entrenched political support for a...