The restructuring of large enterprises has received much attention in the transition of centrally planned economies to market economies. The need to transform these enterprises into viable firms is widely acknowledged. The extent of such restructuring and the determinants that underlie a...

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)...

In this paper the authors provide an analysis of the process of creative destruction across 24 countries and 2-digit industries over the past decade. They rely on a newly assembled dataset that draws from different micro data sources (business registers, census, or representative enterprise...

Many industrial firms in Russia have undergone changes in ownership, but relatively few have been competitively restructured. Using survey and other data, the author suggests that much of Russian industry is immune from robust competition because of heavy vertical integration, geographic...

There is currently a large interest in understanding firms'access to finance, particularly in the financing of small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). But the financing patterns of SMEs across countries is not well understood. For example, little is known about the relative importance of...

Employment in developing countries is disproportionately concentrated in very small firms. The authors examine the extent to which the distribution of firm size is related to the quality of the legal system using data from Mexico. They combine Lucas'(1978) model of firm size with Himmelberg,...

Using a large sample of data on mid-sized firms in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, the authors compare the performance of privatized and state firms in the environment of the postcommunist transition. They find strong evidence that private ownership--except for worker ownership--...

Using enterprise survey data for 1995-97, the author studies and compares how different modes of privatizing to insiders affect enterprise restructuring in two former Soviet republics, Georgia and Moldova. Restructuring in companies in which incumbent managers received significant ownership...

Studies of successful and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and their marketing and technical support systems were undertaken for Colombia, Indonesia, Japan, and the Republic of Korea. Three to four subsectors were examined in each country. The sample worldwide amounted to 445 firms. Mechanisms to...

Corporate governance deals with the ways in which the rights of outside suppliers of equity finance to corporations are protected and receive a fair return. Good practices reduce the risk of expropriation of outsiders by insiders and thus the cost of capital for issuers. The authors review the...