Using survey data from 28 transition countries, we test for the complementarity and substitutability of market-relevant skills and institutions. We show that democracy and good governance complement market skills in transition economies. Under autocracy and weak governance institutions there is...

Economic self-interest and social considerations are the key determinants of public support for market reforms in transition countries. However, political strategies that rely mainly on public support for pushing through economic reforms have limited relevance if the prevailing institutional...

The formation of new private firms can facilitate transition from socialism to a market economy. This study uses data from transition economies to investigate the effects of large-scale privatization and the barriers to the establishment of new firms. It finds that large-scale privatization...

Ten years after the start of transition, there are many puzzles we still have to live with. Why did all countries experience strong declines in output at the outset of economic transformations and most of them are slowly, if at all, recovering from this "transitional recession"? How can these...

This paper examines determinants of privatization in transition countries. Empirical studies of privatization are few and even fewer formal empirical analyses of privatization in transition countries exist. Another goal is to examine differences between large scale and small scale privatization....

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework linking communist regime collapse and privatizing economic reforms. The framework permits us to explain why certain communist regimes lost their monopoly of political power while others have not. We show that the essential difference between...

This paper explores the development of Kosovo's transformation into a market economy. The first objective is to explore the transition from a centrally planned to an open market economy in Kosovo and to examine the challenges of this transformation over the years. In addition, the paper provides...