We reexamine the recent controversy over the possibility that mass enterprise privatization raised mortality in post …-communist countries. Our analysis demonstrates that the country-level correlation of privatization and mortality reported in previous … research is not robust to recomputing the mass-privatization measure, to assuming a short lag for economic policies to affect …

positive effects, and the effects of domestic privatization tend to be larger in countries with a more competitive business …

data permit us to track the privatization process and to estimate the impact of privatization within industry-year cells … majority privatized versus state-owned firms. The gap increases with time since privatization, reaching about 15-17% five years … after privatization. It also increases with calendar time although recent privatizations are associated with smaller …

positive effects, and the effects of domestic privatization tend to be larger in countries with a more competitive business …