Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries is approaching that of firms in advanced economies. We examine the extent of this convergence in the Czech Republic and Russia, economies that represent alternative models of implementing development policies,...

The reform of China's enterprise system increasingly reflects the outcome of China's emerging property rights market. We distinguish between a centrally-directed reform strategy, with characteristics similar to those of a Pigouvian tax, and a market-driven reform process, which captures the...

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...

Governments that privatize state industries often retain control over key distribution assets. While there are many examples of this form of partial privatization, to our knowledge there are no substantial quantitative studies of how governments use their control under these circumstances. In...

There is a major debate regarding the role of concentrated family ownership and control in large firms, with three positions suggesting that such concentration is (1) good, (2) bad, or (3) irrelevant for firm performance. This article reports two studies to shed further light on this debate....

Strategic restructuring of firms through investment is key to a transition from plan to market. Using data on industrial firms in the Czech Republic during 1992-98, we find that (a) foreign owned companies invest the most and cooperatives the least, (b) private firms do not invest more than...

This paper analyzes the effects of ownership structure on corporate environmental performance and examines the link from financial performance to environmental performance in a transition economy. In particular, it analyzes these ownership effects and this performance link using an unbalanced...

Relying upon a rich and unique panel of Hungarian firms over 7 years, from 1992 up to 1998, this paper estimates simultaneously TFP, Total Factor Productivity, identified as efficiency, and the parameters of a model where investment depends upon internal funds, wages, and sales, as in Prasnikar...

We analyze the effects of ownership type and concentration on performance of a population of firms in a model large-scale privatization economy (Czech Republic). Using specifications based on first-differences and unique instrumental variables, we find that few types of private ownership improve...

Using data collected from a panel of 6,205 civilian manufacturing firms located in the Central, Volga, North Caucasus, Northern and Western Siberian regions of Russia, this paper examines the hypotheses that in the first stage of the transition process (1) Russian industry exhibited a low labor...