How should countries in transition to market economies handle the losses of large loss-making enterprises? Over the past six years several governments in transition economies have implemented isolation programs that combine features of reorganization under bankruptcy (as in industrial countries)...

Basing their report on repeat visits in late 1992 to 75 large state-owned manufacturing enterprises (which had been earlier surveyed in mid-1991), the authors present optimistic new evidence about the transformation of state-owned enterprises in Poland. This evidence shows state-owned...

The authors review corporate governance arrangements in the West and conclude that for a system based on bank ownership and control of firms to succeed, the banking system must be free of perverse incentives and state interference, as well as subject to adequate supervision by banking...

Privatizing, or restructuring state-owned enterprises, may lead to massive layoffs, but the number of redundant workers is usually unknown beforehand. The authors estimate labor redundancy by comparing employment levels across enterprises with different degrees of state ownership. In their...

The authors describe the main changes in the Hungarian labor market since 1989. They focus especially on changes in behavior in state and privatized firms, since the shedding and restructuring of labor are at the heart of the transition. They describe five types of firms: 1) state firms (often...

This paper takes stock of recent privatization trends, examines the extent to which government ownership is still prevalent in developing countries, and summarizes emerging issues for state enterprise reform going forward. Between 1990 and 2003, 120 developing countries carried out nearly 8,000...

Public sector restructuring, including labor downsizing, has been one of the main areas of policy activism in developing countries, and transition economies. But little is known about its actual effects. The authors use panel data on Colombian enterprises spanning more than one decade, to assess...

In Vietnam almost a quarter of adults worked in nonfarm household enterprises in 1998. Based on household panel data from the Vietnam Living Standards Surveys of 1993 and 1998, the authors find some evidence that operating an enterprise leads to greater affluence. The data show that nonfarm...

This paper was completed before the events of August 1991. But the analysis of recent modes of privatization in the Soviet Union is still important for understanding the evolving situation. The"present"All-Union regime, was the first regime to implement wide-scale privatization. The process may...

Significant changes in public investment patterns - in both the sectoral uses of funds, and their geographic distribution - emerged after Bolivia devolved substantial resources from central agencies, to municipalities in 1994. By far the most important determinant of these changes are objective...