Driven by fiscal austerity and disenchantment with the performance of state-provided infrastructure services, many governments have turned to the private sector to build, operate, finance, or own infrastructure in power, gas, water, transport, and telecommunications sectors. Private capital...

The authors test several propositions derived by Shleifer and Vishny (1994, 1996) about how privatization and stabilization (hard budget constraints) affect enterprise behavior. They document the changes in financing, employment, and operating efficiency that have occurred in more than 6300...

The ultimate objective of economic reforms in Central and Eastern Europe is the creation of flexible and efficient market economies. Attaining this objective requires comprehensive action on at least four fronts: macro-economic stabilization, price and market reforms, privatization of state...

The report examines both statistically and analytically various aspects of commercial bank provisioning. In the first phase, the report defines the differences existing between countries and explains the implications of provisioning for banks'balance sheets. Secondly, it looks at the various...

The recently completed privatization of Mexican commercial banks may be one of the most successful financial operations in recent years. In 13 months, the Mexican authorities were able to sell 18 banks to private groups of Mexican investors for more than US$13 billion total - more than three...

Some critics of privatization argue that poor labor force restructuring is a key concern and that governments should establish better retrenchment programs. Using new data from a sample of 400 companies in the world, Chong and Lopez-de-Silanes test competing theories about the wisdom of...

Many countries in Eastern Europe assigned banks the responsibility for restructuring enterprises. Such restructuring had five components: 1) triage of enterprises into three classes -- viable, viable with debt relief, and nonviable; 2) work with management of overindebted firms on a restructuring...

The financial sector should be active in enterprise restructuring in the transitional economies, and should help channel resources to the private sector. What will best help the sector achieve these tasks: gradual reform or radical reform? Liberalization and privatization are the most urgent...

Neither in theory nor in practice have financial economists confronted a problem as all encompassing as the reform of financial systems in the socialist economies in transition (SET). In the economics literature, the impact of the financial system on the productive sectors has been a subject of...

In Germany, small firms are financed chiefly by small banks, which are grouped into two systems: the savings banks (Sparkassen) and the credit cooperatives. The government actively supports the financing of investments in small industry - especially business start-ups. The author explains how...