Thinking about Ronald Coase, economists generally refer to transaction and social costs, to the importance of property rights and institutions or to the Coase-theorem. Examine his work more closely, a common feature takes shape behind these ideas, the public utilities. The constant and detailed...

Energy industries are mainly organised at national level in Hungary, however local governments have their specific role in the system. Local governments have been major performers in the first period of the transition process: they were entitled to receive 25 per cent of the shares in electric...

Several decades of market opening has become a characteristic of network industries. Its main hindrances and aids has come into sight during this period. There is a need now to evaluate the process of market opening and to assess the steps to be taken. Market opening is usually measured by...

This paper contributes to the literature by carrying out the first empirical investigation into the role of different types of enterprises in the creation of social trust. Drawing on a unique dataset collected through the administration of a questionnaire to a representative sample of the...

Exploiting a unique institutional feature of the early Romanian privatization setup, when a group of firms was explicitly barred from any privatization, we test how politicians select firms into privatization programs. Using a comprehensive dataset that includes all firms inherited from...

Exploiting a unique institutional feature of the early Romanian privatization setup, when a group of firms was explicitly barred from any privatization, we test how politicians select firms into privatization. Using comprehensive data that includes all firms inherited from socialism, we estimate...

With the help of a peculiar institutional feature of early Romanian privatization, when a group of firms was explicitly banned to become private, we test which factors contributed to the selection of firms into long-term state ownership. We find that politicians sheltered large and inefficient...

The objective of this paper is to review new restrictions imposed on land sales in selected Eastern EU Member States and to investigate the potential impacts of these restrictions on land prices, transaction distortions, and access to land. The main common element of the new regulations across...

In this chapter, we review land market institutions in the European Union (EU) and their potential impact on land markets. We first review land tenure-/ownership regulations and find that they vary heavily across EU Member States. Four types of tenure-/ownership measures are implemented in the...