It has long been argued that private ownership of firms leads to better firm performance. However, theory as well as empirical evidence suggest that factors like agency problems may not allow privately owned firms to operate more efficiently or perform better that state owned firms. At the same...

Using its control of regulated inputs, a government agency extracts rents from a manager who undertakes an investment. Such government rent-seeking activity leads to a typical hold-up problem. Government ownership serves as a second-best commitment mechanism, through which the government agency...

This paper examines the determinants of wage pressure in large companies, including ownership characteristics and the impact of regional labour markets. By using a panel of 329 Polish largest firms during the period 1997- 2001, we find evidence of rent sharing activities, however there is also...

During the transition from plan to market, managers and politicians succeeded in maintaining control of large parts of the stock of socialist physical capital. Despite the obvious importance of this phenomenon, there have been no efforts to model, measure and investigate this process...

In this paper we examine the effects of interest group pressure and the structure of political institutions on infrastructure deployment by state-owned electric utilities in a panel of 78 countries during the period 1970 – 1994. We consider two factors that jointly influence the rate of...

The privatization process in Eastern Europe is not irreversible. Future governments may want to (partially) expropriate successful private firms in order to subsidize unsuccessful ones. We use a simple median voter model to predict the policy of future governments. It is shown that there will be...

This paper examines the importance of competition in the growth and development of firms. We make use of the large-scale natural experiment of the shift from an economic system without competition to a market economy to shed light on the factors that influence innovation by firms and their...

According to leading economic theorists, creating capitalism out of communism requires rapid privatization. In this article we empirically test the welfare implications of privatization policies in Post-Soviet countries by using cross-national panel mortality data as an indicator of social...

Post-privatization restructuring of former state-owned enterprises (FSOEs) encompasses both shorter-run "defensive" actions and longer-run "strategic" measures. Restructuring involves changes in corporate governance, organizational structure, management, labor, capital, technology, output, and...

This paper uses a unique representative firm level data set to analyse the effect of domestic and international competitive pressure and ownership changes in three emerging economies, Bulgaria Poland and Romania. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: Domestic competitive pressure,...